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Reassessing Mikhail Tal vs Tigran Petrosian - USSR championship 1973

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Sometimes it is good to update analysis with new analysis - and sometimes new resources spring up!

Hi all

Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian are two of my favorite world champions for their rather eccentric and extreme playing styles. It seems they both wanted to dismantle the objectivity of "trees of analysis" in their own specific ways. Tal would create complications that would give opponent's major headaches if they wanted to analyse the trees, and Petrosian would make sure his opponents wouldn't have any pieces to move - so nothing to analyse. A bit binary - either too much analysis - or no analysis needed!.

According to Chessgames.com, their track record against each other shows friendship through draws:

Classical games: Tigran V Petrosian beat Mikhail Tal 5 to 4, with 35 draws. Including rapid/exhibition games: Tigran V Petrosian tied Mikhail Tal 5 to 5, with 36 draws. "

In one of their key decisive games, I did some analysis and a video of an epic encounter Mikhail Tal vs Tigran Petrosian. The video as a form of annotation of games is a little bit inflexible. Here is the video:

https://youtu.be/mN-9aiCYIM8

(Playlist Mikhail Tal: http://kingscrusher.tv/tal
Playlist Tigran Petrosian: https://kingscrusher.tv/tigranpetrosian)

In my updated analysis, I did find a key move that seems to hold for Mikhail Tal, at a critical juncture:

https://lichess.org/study/JIEm0Eqe/pb57Efdd#38

In the game the tempting Rdg1 was played:

https://lichess.org/study/JIEm0Eqe/pb57Efdd#39

If we take a scientific look into this game, White actually has the amazing c3! :

https://lichess.org/study/JIEm0Eqe/lBWXe8tt#39

This resource seems to change the picture of events. It emerges that White can resourcefully draw. It did seem a little two-way in terms of White having g-file pressure. And surely White could have somehow done something. The concrete analysis does seem to show, that maybe Tal could have drawn from this position. And this leads to going in reverse to check earlier if Petrosian could have improved.

I found earlier a move that seems a little counter-intuitive:

https://lichess.org/study/JIEm0Eqe/T24S9tbc#34

It seems this was the way to go from a theoretical perspective with Black holding quite a significant advantage. Black's King safety is on a precipice.

This game is a major street fight! Resources might still need to be uncovered!

The final position of mainline of game

https://lichess.org/study/JIEm0Eqe/pb57Efdd#54

Key takeaway points

  • Editable blogs are in many ways better for the evolving analysis of a chess game than Youtube videos. Videos are hard to update with analysis
  • Newer and stronger engines start to reveal deeper truths about games and uncover some amazing resources sometimes
  • Great annotators in the past often have been great practitioners - the art of annotating games apparently helped contribute to the strength of understanding of Alexander Alekhine
  • Enjoy finding resources in historical games and be prepared to update old analyses!
  • The new analysis and new truths can also lead to important abstractions or patterns that may be useful as well in many different scenarios

Hope you enjoyed this blog :). Any likes and follows are really appreciated. Also, I also have some interesting chess courses at https://kingscrusher.tv/chesscourses to check out.

Cheers, K