Mikhail Tal--Master of Sacrifice: Mikhail Tal's Best Games of Chess, 1951-60

by Peter Clarke and Peter H. Clarke

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0713468998
• ISBN13: 9780713468991
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: B.T. Batsford
• Length: 195 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Best Tal collections of his 1950 games

Yes i know Tal also wrote a great book. But, if you want the best coverage of his emergence in the 1956 USSR championship up to his title match this 1960's book is it. The notes are deep, well-researched, thorough and written to the best of the writers ability. The biography is good and gives a nice feel for how Soviet chess looked to westerners in the early 60's. P H Clarke knows his stuff - he wrote a good book later on Petrosian, translated the Smyslov book (now cheaply available from Dover) and other translations and an interesting book of USSR miniatures. All chess players can enjoy this book for the pleasure of the games, the exhuberance of the writing and picture of how exciting it was when Tal shot from nowhere to world champion in four years.Weak players will like the story, medium players will learn to attack and stronger players can study the deep notes, learn some chess history and find out how the Benoni Defense became popular for a while.The book is all about attacking play. Of all the world champions, Tal made the most modest impact on openings and was only a so - so endgame player, with good but not great technique. But the tension he produces in these games!!! David Bronstein has described how in the opening Tal's plan is to get his pieces off the back rank in order start sacrificing them somewhere - usually around the the enemy king. Tal has been called the Magician from Riga; this book covers his best period before his health problems set in. If you like Tal from his own two masterpieces (the Botvinnik-Tal match and his Life and Games) this is a book you need, to see how he was viewed by his contemporaries and begin to get the feeling why grandmasters began to talk of the Tal Problem (e.g. how to cope psychologically when scheduled to play him - like they have to with Kasparov now - only Tal is universally reported as a having been a pretty nice man to know). This very readable book is probably the best single volume for explaining to non-addicts about being addicted to chess, chess books and the possibility of this being an exciting pasttime. When any chessplayer needs a lift then get a fix from one or two games in this book.