The Chess Mind

In this position, presented in a post a couple of days ago, it's White (Nezhmetdinov) to move and win:



How does White win? Nezhmetdinov played Rd7 and won, and Tal endorsed it in Attack with Mikhail Tal* (co-authored with Iakov Damsky). That means two of the greatest tacticians ever got it wrong, and so did Suetin, a strong master (then a young master; later a grandmaster and trainer to world champion Tigran Petrosian).

The right move is Nd7, which works quite similarly to the Rd7 Bxd7 Nxd7+ line in the game. The real point of this exercise is determining why Rd7 is incorrect. The spectacular answer is here.

*If you follow the link and click "Search Inside", you'll find the example on pages 5-6.

In this post from last Saturday I offered the raw score of the game Tal-Petrosian, from the 4th cycle of the 1959 Candidates Tournament. The game was drawn in just 24 moves, but only after a lot of excitement: Tal sacrificed a piece, then a further exchange, only to have Petrosian sac a full rook and then another piece to achieve perpetual check.

The game has the appearance of a perfectly played draw (leaving aside subsequent refinements in the opening) with attack and counter-attack ideally balanced. Yet Tal missed a couple of chances for a win. Did anyone find them? The game made for a fine analytical exercise, and I hope some of you took me up on it. For those of you who didn't, I'd say "too bad" - but it's not too late! Go back to the earlier post and give it a try. For those who did and want to compare their results to mine, or who just want to enjoy an exciting game with annotations, have a look here.

It's White to move in the game Rashid Nezhmetdinov-Alexei Suetin, RSFSR Championship 1947:



Nezhmetdinov, one of the great tacticians of his day, a brilliant attacker with a penchant for sacrificing that exceeded even Tal's, played the natural 1.Bxe6, and after 1...fxe6 2.Qxe6+ Be7 (2...Qe7 is better and unclear) 3.Ne4 Bc8 4.Nf6+ Kf8 found a very attractive finish.



Can you find it? The answer, along with analysis of the Tal-Petrosian game given a few days ago, will be posted by the end of the weekend.

While going through some Mikhail Tal games in P.H. Clarke's fine old book Mikhail Tal, Master of Sacrifice, I came across this lively draw, given without commentary in the notes to Tal-Larsen, Portoroz (izt) 1958:

Tal,Mihail - Petrosian,Tigran V [B94]
Candidates Tournament Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade (26), 25.10.1959

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nbd7 6.Bc4 a6 7.Bg5 Qa5 8.Qd2 e6 9.0-0 h6 10.Bh4 g5 11.Bg3 Nh5 12.Bxe6 fxe6 13.Nxe6 Nxg3 14.fxg3 Ne5 15.Rxf8+ Rxf8 16.Qxd6 Rf6 17.Nc7+ Kf7 18.Rf1 Rxf1+ 19.Kxf1 Nc4 20.Qxh6 Qc5 21.Nxa8 Nd2+ 22.Ke2 Bg4+ 23.Kd3 Qc4+ 24.Ke3 Qc5+ ½-½

It's a fun game and good for analysis too, as there are enough forcing variations to remain oriented but enough free rein to exercise creativity and perhaps find something the players missed. I'll probably post the game with some notes in a few days; readers are encouraged to write in with their analytical finds in comments to that post. Meanwhile, enjoy!