The Golden History of Mikhail Tal and Soviet Chess in the words of Gary Kasparov (Episode 1)

Gary Kasparov is a very familiar name to chess lovers. His name will undoubtedly be among the living legends of chess. According to many, he is the greatest chess player of all time. In an hour-long interview on Russian radio Echo Moscow on November 30, 2006, Gary discusses many things. Mikhail Tal was at the center of the discussion. He also talks about the golden days of Soviet chess and many of his predecessors.He also discussed some of the masterminds of chess, such as Anatoly Karpov, Alexander Alekhaine, Jos কাপ Raউলl Capablanca, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Batvinik, Vasli Smysslov, Tigran Petersian, and Paul Keres. This time we are organizing this huge interview. For the convenience of the reader, we will highlight the interview in several parts. Today is the first episode.

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  ★Introduction

Mikhail Tal was an exceptional chess player. Josউল Ra রাl was not a classic chess genius like Capablanca, according to legend who learned to play as a child just by watching adults play. Riga school student Misha (nickname Tal) learned to play chess soon after World War II.In 1948 he was only 10 years old. But when he learned the game, then there was no doubt that he was going to be a genius. Three years later, Tal played for the Latvian youth team. At the age of 18 he won the Latvian Championship, and at the age of 21 he won the USSR Championship.

That said, chess was very popular in the Soviet Union, nothing compared to what is now Russia. Chess was the national game. Most schools had chess circles. World Championship games were analyzed in newspapers and on TV. Millions of people were able to appreciate the style and beauty of the best of all chess players.

  *Original interview

Eugenie Kiselev (Presenter): Introducing today's guest. 13th World Champion Gary Kasparov is with me in this studio.

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 *Presenter: Thank you for participating in our program. The first question I want to ask is, do you know Tal personally?

  *Gary: Yes, of course. I played against him.

  *Presenter: What was the score?

  *Gary: We played a lot of matches, a lot of draws, I won one. This is the classical chess score. The score is the same in fast chess blitz. But one of the matches I remember most was the one against Tal, which was played in March 1984.

Pioneer Palace teams played each other in a tournament at the USSR, with their Grandmaster Alumni captaining the students. Our team reached the final and played against Riga. Tal was their captain. That handshake with him, a different feeling. I wasn't even 11 then, and Tal himself was against me. I was so impressed by him that I could not play well and lost quickly. But I still remember those feelings.

Then we played our first official game at the 196 USSR Championship. I played a blitz game of 16 matches, had a score of 6-7, I watched these matches recently. Even then we have been seen many times on the playground. We had a good relationship.

I did some work with rhythm. He traveled to Baku in 1980, we played a few training matches. Tal kept in touch with chess until his last day. A blitz tournament was held in Moscow just a month before his death.There he looked very ill. But the rhythm was still the rhythm. I lost my only match to him in this blitz tournament. The return match in the second round I made my own, but the reality is that in the end he had a passion and skill towards chess. To my knowledge, he was the only player whose variants did not have to be calculated, he just watched them.