Gurgenidze-Tal, Moscow 1957
Black to play.
Black to play.
The recent Tal Memorial Tournament marked the 70th Anniversary of Mikhail Tal's birth (November 9, 1936), and there have been several remembrances of the great attacking genius and former World Champion, including a nice article yesterday by Dominic Lawson ("Computers have power but they can't dance.") There was also a nice birthday remembrance by Frederic Friedel at ChessBase News ("The Immortality of Mikhail Tal") and the classic online bio by Terry Crandall ("Mikhail Tal, The Game is Afoot") -- the latter of which recounts Tal's famous story of trying to calculate a deep piece sacrifice only to find himself imagining what it would be like to drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh....
Here is a trio of intuitive Knight sacs by the Magician from Riga from Chessgames.com:
- Gurgenidze-Tal, Moscow 1957 (see diagram above)
- Tal-Vasiukov, Kiev 1964 (the hippopotamus game)
2 comments:
Here is another classic knight sac:
Tal - Larsen match game 6, 1965
Funny, such sacrifices are sensed almost thematically now - thanks no doubt to Tal's games.
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