Good day, dear friend!

In 1957-1961, the chess world was turned upside down. On the chess stage, the first violin was played by the talented and inimitable actor Mikhail Tal. In his chess creativity, he discovered new facets of the ancient game.

His triumph was so rapid that at first it involuntarily aroused skepticism. Some even tried to explain his success by saying that he “hypnotized” his opponents.

Mastery development

Tal was born in Riga in 1936. He was taught to play chess by his father, who was a doctor and was fond of the ancient game. Then Mikhail Tal learned the basics of chess at the Palace of Pioneers.

Master of Sports Alexander Koblenz, who was his coach for many years, played a big role in the development of Mikhail Tal as a chess player.

Thanks to his extraordinary abilities The Riga resident's chess career developed at cosmic speed.

Misha achieved his first serious success in the Latvian championship in 1953, a year later he fulfilled the master's standard.

In the 1957 Union Championship, 20-year-old Mikhail Tal, being only a master, beat all the grandmasters and took first place.

Form style

At that time, his contemporaries were especially surprised by his uncompromising and mostly risky style of play: the Riga resident strived for puzzling complications at the board, without having a clear idea of ​​their consequences.

But thanks to his ingenious abilities, he outplayed his opponents, who were lost in difficult positions.

“I began to achieve success in decisive games more and more often. Perhaps because I realized a simple thing: not only was I overcome by fear, but also my opponent,” said Tal.

Rising to the podium

In 1957, Tal's four years began. The Riga resident again wins the national championship, then takes silver, and he also wins in interzonal competitions.

Then Tal wins the candidate tournament for the right to challenge the championship in a match with. In 1960, he defeated the “patriarch” of chess and, at the age of 23, became the 8th world champion.

True, a year later Botvinnik returned the champion title in a rematch, but the name of Mikhail Tal has already entered the chess chronicle forever.

Former world champion

For about 7 more years, Tal's success was very high. He continued to delight the chess world with his brilliant games. His combinational gift allowed him to find opportunities at the board that other strong chess players passed by.

Tal's natural talent amazed his contemporaries. In particular, Mikhail had a phenomenal memory . He could easily reproduce games played years ago from simuls and lightning tournaments.

Mikhail could dictate notes for games from 5 years ago without a board and without recording the games. Once his coaches jokingly asked the question:

“Do you by any chance remember which line Keres played with White in the Queen’s Gambit against Boleslavsky in the third round of the 20th USSR Championship?”

Tal replied: “Stop playing me! Boleslavsky played Keres not in the third round, but in the nineteenth. And Boleslavsky played White, and it was not the Queen’s Gambit, but the Spanish game!”

Unfortunately, after 1969, Mikhail Tal's successes began to fade. Even in tournaments with a not very strong squad, he begins to show low results. In many ways, the reason for the failure was his poor health. There were times when he left the tournament and was forced to go to the hospital.

In the 70s, an operation to remove a kidney took place. In this regard, the magazine “Chess in the USSR” even wrote an obituary, just in case.

Someone in the editorial office thought of showing the text to Tal himself. To which Mikhail Nekhemievich reacted with his characteristic sense of humor. He said that it was necessary to change something in the text and put the signature “ Believe the corrected one. M. Tal ».

Mikhail Tal aggravated his poor health by smoking. He smoked a lot. The cigarette practically never left his mouth. But Botvinnik also said that smoking chess players will not be able to achieve long-term success in chess. He was right.

Among the modern grandmasters who are among the elite of world chess, you will not find practically a single chess player who smokes!

Second wind

In the late 70s, Mikhail Tal again showed excellent results. In 1978, he won the USSR Championship for the 6th time. Only Botvinnik has a better indicator. At this time, the Riga resident took prizes in a number of other major tournaments.

In 1988, despite his venerable age and poor health, Mikhail Tal again surprised everyone. He becomes the first unofficial world blitz championship.

Mikhail Tal is used to being first not only in chess. He was immediately enrolled in school in the 3rd grade, and at the age of 15 he was already a student at the University of Latvia. Mikhail Nekhemievich showed excellent abilities in the field of journalism. He had to work as a teacher at a school where he taught literature.

The scale of Tal's personality will surprise chess fans for a long time.

We present to your attention a position from the Tal-Averkin game (1973). White's move.

Find Mikhail Tal's two-move winning combination.

We also suggest watching a video about a chess champion:

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The 20th century ended a long time ago. In seventeen years, people grow up and grow old, even the climate changes. But when we feel nostalgia for the images of a bygone era, the first people that come to mind are Mikhail Nekhemievich Tal (1936–1992). Tal's legacy is well-read collections of chess games, experience of tournament competition and great victories. But the main thing is the echo of talent and kindness.

In the Soviet Union, chess was taken seriously. The glory of the champions was loud, even schoolchildren knew them by sight, they were celebrated no less eloquently than political leaders, and they were loved beyond the norm. Chess victories were perceived as visible proof of the intellectual superiority of the socialist system. Propaganda? Without a doubt. But it is precisely this aspect of it that is difficult not to recognize as socially useful. It is not for nothing that the best grandmasters of the 20th century were trained by our chess school. And we’re not just talking about a thin layer of geniuses. Millions of people have played chess well since childhood. Hundreds of thousands of tireless enthusiasts understood the intricacies of the ancient game and followed chess tournaments with the fastidiousness of connoisseurs.

His rise was rapid. At less than twenty years old, in 1956, the Riga mathematician won the USSR championship and became a grandmaster. A year later he excels at his first international tournaments. Then he again wins the USSR Championship and, having beaten the best grandmasters in the world, becomes a contender for the title of world champion. That is, it leads to Botvinnik...

Tal swept away all his rivals - experienced, famous grandmasters. There was a rumor that Tal hypnotizes his opponents. One chess player, in order to hide from Talev’s gaze, put on black glasses at the beginning of the game. Tal immediately took out his own black glasses - and put them on too, to the laughter of the audience. This gesture contains invention, humor, and artistry. Everything that accompanied Tal until the end of his days.

The sixties (and this is not just an era - a certain myth) in the Soviet Union began several years earlier than its calendar milestone. The death of Stalin, the 20th Congress (1956), new trends in public life - all this changed people. In the struggle between old and new, something fresh, infectiously young was born. The love of life of the heroes of that time still warms and shines - even if the stars have long gone out.

Troublemaker

In chess, the most striking symbol of the struggle between old and new was the match for the title of world champion between the two Mikhails - Botvinnik and Tal, which began in March 1960 and lasted throughout the spring. Two Soviet geniuses fought for the chess crown – a venerable one and a young one. Botvinnik became one of the strongest chess players in the world back in the thirties, meeting Lasker and Alekhine in tournaments... He created a style that seemed almost invulnerable. But the inflexible Botvinnik could not cope with Tal’s paradoxical manner. In the very first game, the Riga resident won with sacrifices of pieces, in a confusing situation... Botvinnik found more or less logical explanations for his defeat, but, to be honest, no one could stop Tal that year. In terms of victories, Tal won 6:2 - very convincingly! – and became the eighth world champion. The youngest in history.

The audience rejoiced. Only the most loyal fans of Botvinnik, the first Soviet world champion, were sad. Everyone else - and not just chess fans - admired the smiling Riga genius. The point is not only that Tal was younger than Botvinnik and behaved much more sincerely and relaxed than his serious, professorially respectable rival.

Tal's game captivated not only with its unexpected victims and unpredictable moves. Tal was confusing. He seemed to have super vision, allowing him to see combinations on the board that were unthinkable for other chess players. He calculated the situation with lightning speed and went to victory. It seemed that Tal was taking crazy risks, but he had his own algorithm - and it baffled his venerable colleagues. Typhoon, troublemaker, “highway robber” - this is how chess lovers spoke with delight as they analyzed his games.

Tal became a popular favorite. The Soviet Union carried him in their arms, and in Riga the chess king was greeted with unprecedented excitement. This was not just a fashion statement. He defined the style of the era, its best features. Looking at him - talented, young - one could believe in a bright future.

In those years, young people boldly took the lead in many areas. The Shpalikovsky boys in cinema, Yevtushenko and Voznesensky in poetry, Magomayev on the stage, and finally, Gagarin and Titov in space - they were all young and, to a certain extent, broke the canons. This is the spirit of the times - and this time has not passed in vain. Each of his games is like an autograph. And how many boys were carried away by playing under Tal’s magic!

About rivals - with love

Big chess is a world of heightened ambition. War of all against all! To become a great champion, you need aggression, which doubles your strength and motivates you to increase your dedication during grueling matches. Perhaps the only exception to the rule was he, Mikhail Tal. He was a bundle of energy, played and lived on emotions, but at the same time he somehow managed without hating his colleagues and always spoke of chess maestros with love and sometimes with delight. David Bronstein was also distinguished by his good-natured disposition, but he did not become a world champion, he only played in the finals... Tal was probably the “richest” grandmaster: he loved talented people, tried to understand and comprehend them. And replenished the treasury of impressions. Anything else would be petty for Tal... He didn’t know how to live a boring life - and he talked about chess with passion and wit, like no one else.

Yes, Botvinnik exercised the right to a rematch and regained the title of champion with a knockout score. Tal lost his crown. The defeat was explained in different ways: by Tal’s ill health, and by the fact that Botvinnik, like no one else, knew how to rationally “calculate” his opponent. Experience is experience. At first they wanted to postpone the match due to Tal's illness, but Botvinnik insisted and achieved his goal... However, Botvinnik's victory did not overshadow Tal's triumphs.

Then it seemed to many fans that this would not last long, that the Riga grandmaster would still regain his championship laurels. It seemed so, but it turned out that he remained an ex-champion forever. And he wore the crown for only a short time. But, as one wise man said in those days, the title “Mikhail Tal” is higher than the title of world champion. He remained not just an adornment of the chess world, but its most attractive star. It was difficult not to root for Tal - an unpredictable artist, philosopher, creator at the chessboard.

“Everything is clear with me”

He continued to create miracle games, and until the age of fifty he almost never left the top ten grandmasters. In 1966, he reached the final of the Candidates Tournament. He performed brilliantly at various tournaments in 1978. Finally, in 1988, he won the first world championship in “lightning chess.” Then all the strongest chess players gathered in Canada to play blitz - starting with Karpov and Kasparov, who were considered invincible. And Tal won!

One could list Tal’s aphorisms, jokes, and paradoxes for a long time. Evgeniy Gik, a journalist and a remarkable chess expert (he recently passed away), published many conversations with the champion. One day they were talking about music, comparing outstanding chess players with great composers. “Botvinnik reminded him of Bach: bottomless depth, integrity, not a single extra note; Smyslov - Tchaikovsky: melody, melodiousness, unexpected climaxes and bursts; Petrosyan – Liszt: absolute virtuosity.

“But between Botvinnik and Petrosian there was another chess king - Mikhail Tal,” I reminded him.

“Everything is clear to me,” Tal answered. “Before you is the king of operetta, Imre Kalman.”

With all due respect to the Austro-Hungarian operetta and “The Queen of Csardas”, Tal was modest again... He occupies a much higher place in the history of chess. A true classic. But he loved Kalman for his touch of frivolity and self-irony. For him, true self-expression was unthinkable without self-irony, without grace. This is not only Kalman’s, but also Pushkin’s character. Tal's creative evenings in the best Moscow halls are unique. These were meetings with an artist, with a brilliant paradoxist, who sparkled with humor and radiated rare warmth, always laughing at himself. In every phrase he spent himself - for the audience, for his interlocutors. He didn't know how to take care.

“The strong are lucky, and the very strong are very lucky,” Tal used to say. This was the case at tournaments, in creativity, in love. But the champion was unlucky with his health. Serious illness and death at 55 years old. Few people have been so sincerely mourned by strangers. The surname Tal has long become a call sign for those who value eccentricity, talent and kindness in life.

REMEMBER

DON'T Clink Clinks

“Chess Paganini”, “demon”, “whirlwind from the Soviet Union”, “pirate of the chessboard”, “wizard from Riga”, “great actor of the chess stage”... Of the two dozen similar epithets received by the eighth world chess champion Mikhail Tal from to his enthusiastic fans and journalists, the “every queen” (a figure with unlimited possibilities, having a knight’s move in reserve, as Dahl’s explanatory dictionary states) seemed to me the most original and most accurately characterizes Tal’s multifaceted personality.

He was allowed everything. According to Dostoevsky, this is a great sin, but not for Tal. “Misha, you understand that this doesn’t happen,” his friends told him in response to his next victim in a space of black and white cells. “I know, but I want it so bad!..” “I have one inclination, a weakness, call it what you want: I love paradoxical solutions,” Tal himself admitted in an interview with Soviet Sport in June 1987. “So that the leg is longer than the hypotenuse, and twice two equals five.”

On June 28, 1992, at three o’clock in the afternoon, in the 15th city hospital in Moscow, at the age of 56, the great chess player of the century, the “Mozart of chess,” Mikhail Tal, the eighth world champion, died. It seemed that his favorite chess would always save this man, who had gone through 12 complex operations in his life, from going to where the present, past and future merge into one river. But this time a miracle did not happen. “Profuse bleeding. Varicose veins of the esophagus" - even wizards cannot live with such a medical diagnosis... CAVALRY PASS WITH HYPNOSIS

The appearance of Mikhail Tal in big chess, which occurred in the late 50s and early 60s, had the effect of a bomb exploding. The hitherto little-known “hussar from Riga” managed to crush all the recognized chess authorities with a dashing cavalry charge and, at the age of 23, became the youngest world champion, as they say, on the first try and in one breath. It was so implausible that many began to talk seriously about Tal’s hypnotic abilities and the cosmic origin of his combinations with fantastic victim figures, as if coming to life under the hand of the brilliant “commander.” And the almost mystical story of Tal’s birth, which somehow became known to everyone, gave birth to another “solution” to his phenomenal victories...

“SPECIAL PEOPLE” - “SPECIAL” RELATIONSHIPS

The first wife of the eighth world champion, dramatic actress and pop singer Sally (Shulamith) Landau, in her book “The Elegy of Mikhail Tal,” claims that from the very first appearance in Talei’s house, she understood: ““Special people” live here, the relationships between whom do not fit into the framework socialist community." I think that the fact of truly “unique family relationships” professed in the Talya house is unlikely to be disputed by adherents of the “capitalist community”, since Misha’s conception, from the point of view of Christian canons, was vicious. He had two fathers: blood - Robert and the husband of his mother Ida Grigorievna, the father of his older brother Yakov - the famous doctor Nehemia Tal in Riga. And this was not a banal love triangle with secret dates and scenes of jealousy, but, probably, the only way out in their understanding of the situation caused by a viral infection that led Nehemia to incurable impotence. Misha knew that he owed his birth to Robert, who lived in their house, nevertheless, he always considered Nehemiah his father, whom he loved endlessly. And for Robert, Misha was the son of Doctor Tal.

Two months before the birth of Mikhail Nekhemievich, a fairy-tale little mouse that lived on the Riga seaside almost broke with its tail the golden egg from which the chess genius was supposed to emerge. But seriously, Ida Grigorievna herself talked about a huge rat that scared her so much that she, being seven months pregnant, lost consciousness from fear. The doctors' fears about the irreversible consequences of the shock, thank God, were not justified: the birth went well. But when the newborn was brought to the mother for the first time, she again, as then on the Riga seaside, fainted from horror when she saw her son’s twisted three-fingered hand...

BLACK AND WHITE DIAGNOSIS

At the age of six months, Misha, according to another family legend, almost died, contracting a very complex form of meningitis with incessant convulsions and a temperature over 40. Recalling this, Sally Landau writes: “The doctor said that there was almost no hope, but with a favorable outcome after such diseases, great people grow up.” Bearing in mind that the best doctor in Riga was, according to knowledgeable people, Nehemia Tal, I would like to ask: was it not he who was the author of that black and white, like a chessboard, diagnosis? But be that as it may, the most important thing is that Misha survived and truly became first a prodigy, and then a genius. At the age of three he learned to read, at the age of five he learned to multiply three-digit numbers in his head and recite by heart pages of books he had read. At the age of seven he repeated his father’s lectures on medical topics word for word, at twenty-seven he could, without visible effort, remember a dozen and a half moves encountered in some game of the 1939 national championship. At thirty-seven, he was fluent in commentating on chess games in seven European languages...

Journalist Yaroslav Golovanov says:

One day we were sitting with Misha and drinking. I came across some kind of mathematical problem book, and I began to read it out loud, laughing at the pools into which water flows in and out. More than an hour passed. Tal suddenly says out of nowhere:

What's "24"?

In the problem you read, the answer is 24 tons! Check it out.

I checked. Exactly! But I read the problem more than an hour ago, and all this time Tal took an active part in the feast, joked around, I did not see him switch to this problem even for a minute.

WHAT IS OUR LIFE? A GAME…

The very attempt of an ordinary person to invade the territory of a genius, much less to fit Tal’s brightest life into two newspaper pages, looks blasphemous. I am well aware of this, but, as they say, I am not the first and, I am sure, not the last.

Misha Tal became acquainted with chess at the age of seven and since then has never parted with it, considering it his world, in which he, in his own words, lived a full life and expressed himself to the end. “Chess needed Tal, and he appeared, a huge and brilliant artist,” another chess genius, the twelfth world champion Anatoly Karpov, who, by the way, Mikhail Nekhemievich helped prepare for matches with Viktor Korchnoi and Robert Fischer, will say many years later.

In 1953, a 17-year-old second (!) year student at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Riga, Tal (he graduated from school at the age of 15), became the champion of Latvia, and at 21, the strongest chess player in the Soviet Union. What created a sensation in the chess world was not even the final result of the 24th national championship, but the style of play of its winner, which was distinguished by its extraordinary combinational brilliance, full of sparkling imagination, risk and romance. This was a challenge to the then luminaries of chess - Mikhail Botvinnik and Vasily Smyslov, who professed viscous positional play.

The victory at the 1957 USSR Championship became for Tal, figuratively speaking, the runway from which his rapid flight to the top of the world chess Olympus began. Over the next two years, the “hussar from Riga” did not lose almost a single tournament. An unbeaten marathon series of 28 rounds, which ended with a triumph at the Candidates Tournament in Yugoslavia, gave Tal the right to challenge the world title in a match with the then holder of the crown, Mikhail Botvinnik. And he took advantage of the chance, playing with Mozartian ease: however, the score 12.5: 8.5 in his favor speaks for itself.

Journalist Lev Khariton says:

I remember well that match, played in Moscow at the Pushkin Theater. Hundreds of chess fans who were unable to get into the auditorium watched the match on a huge demonstration board installed on Tverskoy Boulevard. I will never forget the famous sixth game. Tal, who played black, immediately after leaving the opening sacrificed, as they say, out of the blue a knight. This was a challenge to Botvinnik, to all followers of cold calculation who tried to drive chess into the Procrustean bed of faceless algorithms. As if nothing had happened, Tal walked around the stage, and the famous champion, who defeated Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine, faced with a surprise, tried in vain to find a solution in his “trademark” position. The hand on Botvinnik's clock moved inexorably forward, but he still could not find the answer.

What was going on in the hall! The audience discussed the position aloud, and shouts of “bravo!” were heard. Finally, Botvinnik demanded that the chess table be moved backstage. Both grandmasters left the stage, and the audience had the opportunity to make noise in full force - like at a boxing match. Tal won this game, and, despite the desperate resistance of Botvinnik, the chess crown passed to the Riga resident, who at that time became the youngest world champion.

“The challenger played very cunningly. He wanted the pieces to move all over the board. In this case, you always had to consider options, and Tal did it better than anyone in those years...” - this is how Mikhail Moiseevich himself explained his unexpected defeat a few years later .

"VOLGA" AT ARM OUTSTANDING

The meeting of the eighth world champion with his countless fans at the Riga railway station defies any description, according to eyewitnesses. She had to be seen, and newsreel footage of an enthusiastic crowd carrying a Volga car with Tal sitting in it on outstretched arms went around the whole world. This was the pinnacle of the career of the 23-year-old chess player, who, by the way, became a father in the same year of 1960: on October 12, he and Sally had a son, Gera. It seemed that Fortune smiled at Mikhail with all her radiant smile, and the future was seen as a wide open road with fans jubilant on the sidelines, ready to do anything for their idol. But life, they say, has a plot, and plots, as we know, gravitate towards all sorts of surprises: further events developed in such a way that a star named Tal, alas, had to descend to the sinful earth...

THE SMITH OF HIS MISTRESS

Anatoly Matsukevich, a chess observer who once worked for Soviet Sport, told me that Tal, who often visited Moscow, usually stayed at the Sport Hotel, if possible in room 1313. In response to perplexed questions, he joked: “We ourselves are the architects of our own misfortune.” Of course, Mikhail Nekhemievich himself initiated many of the problems that arose in his life. In particular, the so-called sports mode was a very relative concept for him. Even those closest to him were amazed by the irrepressibility of Tal, a man by no means a heroic build, in drinking alcoholic drinks, in which he apparently sought salvation.

But in fairness, it must be said that not everything depended on him. The three-fingered right hand, which so frightened Ida Grigorievna at one time, looked like nothing more than a natural mark of genius in comparison with the incurable congenital kidney disease that tormented him all his life. “From our first meetings, I noticed that Misha was swallowing handfuls of some medicine. Suddenly he turns pale, wrinkles - and puts a handful of capsules in his mouth,” recalls Sally Landau. According to her, almost the next day after the victory over Botvinnik, her husband began to have wild pains...

Mikhail Nekhemievich's son German (a now famous doctor who emigrated to Israel in 1990) is still convinced that it was not his father who lost the rematch to Botvinnik, but his diseased kidney. When in the end the decision was made to remove it and Tal ended up on the operating table in one of the Tbilisi hospitals, the most experienced doctors were amazed: why is this man still alive? “What they saw could not possibly be called a kidney. It was a solid molten necrotic mess...” says German Mikhailovich.

However, Mikhail Tal himself absolutely could not stand talking about his health and more than once turned to fellow journalists with a request not to look for reasons for his defeat in the rematch. “All the talk about how I prepared less for it is absolutely unfounded. “I prepared very seriously,” he said in the above-mentioned interview with Soviet Sport. – Nevertheless, without false coquetry, I must say that I was absolutely not interested in the arithmetic outcome of the match: whether I would retain the crown or not. The Game was at the forefront. It was incredibly interesting for me to play with Botvinnik, whose fan I became as a boy in 1945. I was already a sufficiently competent chess player to realize that Mikhail Moiseevich understood chess like no one else. A head taller than me. And only in the “twist” my chances were better. During both matches, I could not shake the feeling that a second-year student experiences during an exam in front of a professor. This has never happened to me before or after the match...”

The fact that Mikhail Nekhemievich was not lying is evidenced by the fact that, being the world champion in 1961, he did not plead illness and insist on postponing the match, moreover, he agreed to play in Moscow, on the “candidate’s field”...

BLITZ WITH PAIN

Then in his life there were many more high-profile victories at the most prestigious tournaments, hundreds of brilliant games worthy of textbooks on the art of chess. As a member of the USSR national team, Tal became the winner of the World Olympiads, at the age of 52 he won the title of the first world blitz champion, but he never managed to reach the top of Olympiad again. Nevertheless, the dream remained alive in him even after he, apparently under the influence of illness and a failed family life, became seriously addicted to alcohol. Moreover, some people are still confident to this day that Tal did not shy away from drugs during these years. But this is not true: yes, there was an addiction to morphine in the postoperative period, but there was also a painful weaning from it in a grueling struggle with intolerable, destructive pain. And the addiction to cognac, coupled with almost round-the-clock smoking of the beloved “Kent”, was just an alternative to morphine.

"SIDE OPTIONS"

I read somewhere that Tal's life was an eternal pursuit of two ladies - fame and a skirt. As for fame, I think it’s unlikely, since Mikhail Nekhemievich selflessly loved chess, and not himself in chess. But about the female gender, apparently, it’s true. And this was surprising, because, according to the beautiful Sally, she “had never met another person in her life who was so indifferent to her own appearance. We even had to catch him to trim his nails and force him into the bathroom.”

“One day,” continues Sally, “Mikhail admitted that his legs hurt all day. I looked and laughed: he was wearing two different shoes, both on his right foot...”

Nevertheless, women adored Tal, and when he, as Sally claims, opened his mouth, they “simply went crazy.” His numerous novels, which Tal himself called “side options that unexpectedly arose in the party,” ultimately led to the breakup of the family - he broke up with Sally.

Then, in different years, next to Tal were the soloist of the Berezka ensemble Mira Koltsova, pianist Bella Davidovich, film actress, Soviet film star Larisa Sobolevskaya... There was even a marriage union with a young Georgian poetess, very short-lived, even despite the fact that he was blessed by the then first secretary Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia Mzhavanadze.

And only after meeting the modest typist Angelina (Gelei), which happened one fine day at the Riga chess club, Tal found the “option” he was looking for. This woman (much, by the way, younger than him), who became the mother of his daughter Jeanne and third wife, remained with him until the end of his days.

FROM THE DOSSIER OF THE NEWSPAPER “SOVIET SPORTS”

Tal Mikhail Nekhemievich. Outstanding Soviet chess player. Born on November 9, 1936 in Riga. Honored Master of Sports (1960). International Grandmaster (1957). "Daugava" (Riga). Eighth world champion (1960–1961). An eight-time winner of the World Chess Olympiads as a member of the USSR national team (1958, 1960, 1962, 1966, 1972, 1974, 1980,1982), he usually took first places on his board. Three times he showed the absolute best result at the Olympics, in particular in 1958 he scored 13.5 points out of 15 possible. Twice (1970, 1984) he participated in matches of the national teams of the USSR and the rest of the world. Six-time European champion (1957, 1961, 1970, 1973, 1977, 1980). For almost a quarter of a century (1962–1985) he remained among the contenders for the chess crown. Four-time champion of the USSR (1957,1958, 1967, 1972). Winner of about 40 major international tournaments. Three-time world champion among students in the team competition. Winner of the first unofficial World Blitz Championship (1988). Editor-in-Chief of the Shahs magazine (1960 - 1970). Awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples (1961) and the Badge of Honor (1960).

VERBATIM

Garry KASPAROV, 13th world champion:

– Despite his super-short stay on the chess throne (also a record), Tal was one of the brightest stars in the chess firmament. Combinations, sacrifices, inexhaustible optimism - all this was a reflection of Soviet society, which breathed a sigh of relief after the iron fists of Stalinism.

Lev KHARITON, journalist:

– Of course, the language of literature or cinema is more accessible than the language of chess, but I would venture to express the idea that in the silent movements of the pawns and pieces of the Riga “wizard” one could feel a rebellious spirit, a desire to take a sip of at least a little spiritual oxygen, which was characteristic of the early 60s. It is symptomatic that as soon as the valves with clean air closed, Tal was replaced by others - and chess smelled like machine mechanics.

P.S

In the early 70s, before Tal had his kidney removed in Tbilisi (at that time the success rate of such an operation was 30 percent), the magazine “Chess in the USSR” prepared an obituary just in case. When everything worked out and Tal arrived in Moscow, someone from the editorial office, out of sincerity, showed him this text.

“I am the only person who read his obituary during his lifetime,” Mikhail Nekhemievich later joked bitterly about this. – By the way, they missed something there, and I managed to edit it...

How the idols left. The last days and hours of people's favorites Razzakov Fedor

TAL MIKHAIL

TAL MIKHAIL

TAL MIKHAIL(chess player, world champion (1960–1961), six-time USSR champion (1957–1978); died on June 28, 1992 at the age of 56).

E. Gik says: “In the early 90s, a Leningrad woman named Marina was inseparable from Tal. His friends (and who didn’t consider themselves his friend?!) treated many of Tal’s adventures on the love front with a condescending attitude, but Marina seemed to arouse universal protest. Yes, the tastes and preferences of the chess genius sometimes surprised everyone. However, in the tragic months of 1992, Marina behaved impeccably, took care of and saved the sick Tal, and in the last days she took on the most difficult responsibilities that no nurse could handle...

Tal died on June 28, 1992 in one of the Moscow hospitals. Marina was the only woman who was next to him in his last moments. And Gelya (Tal’s third wife) who arrived that same morning from Cologne. F.R.) rushed around Moscow in search of medicines that could no longer help. (She was informed that her ex-husband was very ill only two days before his death.) George (Tal’s son. - F.R.) some complications arose with the visa, and he appeared in Moscow three hours after his father’s death. Hera called his mother, who did not immediately believe what had happened. Sally (Tal's first wife. - F.R.) realized that these days I also had to be close to Mikhail, and immediately flew out. The funeral took place in Riga, where Tal's coffin was transported. So both Tal's wives - both the first and the last - ended up together, both in their homeland. Marina, of course, was not there...

Once, when Sally and Mikhail were still young, Tal joked: “If I ever die, you will have to put a monument on my grave.” Amazingly, everything turned out exactly as he predicted. Returning to Riga six years after Misha’s death and visiting the Jewish cemetery, Sally was horrified: at the site of Tal’s grave, there was nothing except a handful of earth. “Where did his many friends go, since many of them got rich long ago?” – she thought bitterly. And in 1998, it was Sally who finally erected a monument to the genius of chess.

As for Tal’s last woman, Marina, after the death of her loved one, she got married and gave birth to a son, whom she naturally named Misha. And almost immediately after giving birth she left her husband. She no longer needed him: now she had Mishenka again, and the whole meaning of her life was concentrated in him. This story is so touching that it looks like a Christmas story..."

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