1961
May 13 1961
The Guardian, London, Greater London, England Saturday, May 13, 1961
Tal's shortcomings exposed ruthlessly
What Botvinnik's success has shown
By Leonard Barden, our Chess Correspondent
Now that the world championship match has ended so unexpectedly and so decisively, the inquests will be more heated than usual.
During the last few years, Tal has built up a powerful mystique as a player whose demon glare and phenomenal powers of calculation were predestined to sweep aside all opposition.
When Smyslov violently criticized Tal's style in a newspaper article, announced that he would show Tal how a real grandmaster played, and was then defeated by one of the unsoundest sacrifices Tal has ever made, it seemed to the chess public like a judgment of the gods. When the press bureau at the first Botvinnik match called one of Tal's traps “gunshot at sparrows,” Botvinnik promptly fell into it. As Tal routed grandmaster after grandmaster, the swell of criticism of his style was dulled and stilled.
Hole in the hat
After the latest match, however, Botvinnik has become the man who has calmly pointed out the hole in the hat from which the conjurer was pulling rabbits. The match has seen not only the loss of Tal's world title but his transformation from the attacking genius with phenomenal imaginative reflexes to a player who more than once dithered around in the middle game without a constructive idea.
Part of the genesis of this remarkable change is certainly nothing to do with chess. Tal had a painful form of kidney trouble just before the match; he was advised by doctors to postpone it, but retorted that he and not the doctors was playing Botvinnik. The defending champion also went down with influenza after the eighth game, and it was then that he lost three games running, playing moves so clearly contrary to basic principles that one master at Bognor shook his head and said they were only possible if Tal had thought them up during a fever.
There is a reverse side to this coin: it is probable that a greater freedom from private worries also helped to account for Botvinnik's vastly improved form. During last year's match his wife was seriously ill, a fact which he generously did not put forward as an excuse and which has only recently become known to the chess world.
Decisive factor
It would be entirely wrong, however, to regard this just as the victory of a healthy man over a sick one. Given positions which suited him, as in the eighth and twelfth games of the match, Tal was as tactically sure and devastating in attack as ever. The real key to Botvinnik's success was the way he exposed, more clearly and persistently than ever before, how much Tal is vulnerable in both closed and simplified positions.
By the end of the match Botvinnik was setting up fixed pawn formations and offering the exchange of queens at almost every opportunity. He saved two endings, in the sixteenth and twentieth games, when every master spectator had given him up for lost.
Another decisive factor in the match was Botvinnik's superior theoretical preparation. This was again partly a reflection of his better psychological approach to the match. With Black, Tal seemed to be trying to show that he could play positional chess by adopting defences like the Nimzo-Indian and Slav which were foreign to his style but admirably suited to Botvinnik's; as these openings developed, Botvinnik always had a useful innovation ready to spring on his opponent. It was only when Tal switched to the King's Indian that he obtained satisfactory opening positions with Black; but by then he was under the fresh handicap of needing to play for a win in every game, so that Botvinnik could choose simplifying variations and sit back and wait for Tal to overreach himself.
What of the future? Keres and Petrosian, the other leading Russian contenders for the world title, will now be mentally measuring themselves against Botvinnik in 1963 and fancying their chances. One can also imagine Bobby Fischer's Brooklyn voice disturbing the older members of the Manhattan Chess Club from their over-the-board slumbers as he comments on the result:
The future
What will happen to Tal? As the recent careers of Bronstein and Smyslov have shown, it is only too easy to lose your ambition and slip back once you have reached the world title pinnacle and have been repulsed by Botvinnik. Tal will have the additional disadvantage hence forward that his weaknesses have been so ruthlessly and precisely exposed in this match. From now on, Tal will surely receive such a rash of Caro-Kanns and queen swaps in every tournament in which he competes that his mind will dwell sadly a la recherche du temps perdu when his opponents were wont to become ready victims to the slashing attacks against the Sicilian and French in which he specializes. Botvinnik has not only won the match, he has shown the chess world how to play against Tal.
Although it would not be surprising if Tal's career enters a trough for a few years, he is still exceptionally young for a world master and his talents are so great that he will surely make a new bid for the title. He may never eliminate his weaknesses in blocked and simplified positions, but there will be few of his opponents with the strategic depth of a Botvinnik.
The lessons of this match, if Tal cares to learn them, are that not every opening leads to the kind of middle game he likes, and that there are other, subtler weapons besides the dazzling pyrotechnics of an open position.
Yesterday Botvinnik again opened with the Samisch Attack against the King's Indian, but the game developed on more orthodox lines than in the previous games with this opening.
Botvinnik conducted the middle game in a fine enterprising style, sacrificing two pawns for a fierce attack against the king. Even the exchange of queens failed to stem the onslaught, and Tal resigned when faced with decisive material loss. This was one of Botvinnik's best wins of the entire match, and particularly commendable when he only needed a draw.
Mikhail Botvinnik vs Mikhail Tal
"King Crimson" (game of the day Aug-04-2024)
Tal - Botvinnik World Championship Rematch (1961), Moscow URS, rd 21, May-12
King's Indian Defense: Saemisch Variation (E80) 1-0
