Life is full of ironies. Paul Keres was Tal’s childhood idol. But now they were rivals vying for the right to play the world championship match with Botvinnik.
Tal on his first meeting with KeresThe year 1954 began for me with my first tournament game against a Grandmaster, none other than Keres. We traveled to Tallin for the traditional friendly match… The surprises, some of them really touching, began as early as the station in Tallin when among those there were to meet us we saw Keres. We, who were mainly lads, were taken in his car to the hotel, and for literally each of us he found a friendly, welcoming smile. The first round was played that evening. Our game began with the King’s Indian Defence…I played sharply, Keres seized the initiative, and I admired the way that, in time trouble he left himself literally 3-5 seconds for his last move and, having worked everything out, captured my piece, not fearing the series of checks which then commenced. Of course I lost the adjourned game, but I drew the second as Black, finding an unexpected move in a somewhat inferior ending. |
Estonian world class GM Paul Keres
But they had met before – in a simultaneous display. Asked by a journalist whether he had always wanted to do battle with famous players, Tal replied: "Yes, of course, I very much wanted to do so. Even at that time I was occasionally able to do this, though only in simultaneous displays. My first such encounter was with Keres, our neighbour from the North, our idol. He came to give a simultaneous display against us, and although he was engaged at that time in the battle for the chess crown, I considered it unethical to play against him in a normal display. I was, after all, a finalist in the Latvian Championship, a solid first category player. So I put my name down for a display with clocks, which Keres gave on ten boards. He suffered two defeats-at the hands of future grandmasters Gipslis and myself. And I was very pleased with this game, not so much because I won, but more because I defeated Keres in this Botvinnik Variation. I thought that psychologically this would be a terrible shock for him, since Keres and Botvinnik were always considered to be, as it were, fundamental opponents at the chess board. Time passed. Paul Petrovich and I played together in tournaments for several years. And once I asked him whether he remembered our first encounter. Yes, he replied, in Tallin, in the match between Latvia and Estonia. No, I told him, earlier, in Riga, in a simultaneous display. And here paul Petrovich admitted that he had completely forgotten this game. And I had thought that a defeat in the Botvinnik Variation would remain in his memory for ever…"
Keres was a combinational genius. In his youth he used to revel in wild positions as much as Tal did later. However, he changed over the years. He attained maturity and strove for perfection. He did retain his combinational style, but now it was refined by a fine positional understanding. He had beaten Tal twice in this tournament. Unfortunately, his phenomenal intuition let him down in the crucial 17th round. Tal had a half point lead, and Keres saw an opportunity to beat him in this encounter when Tal chose a poor line of Sicilian Paulsen Variation. He went all out for an attack, thinking that Tal would be uncomfortable in defence. Here is what happened:
A terrific struggle! It was a triumph for Tal and a tragedy for Keres. Although he did manage to beat Tal again in a marathon game in this tournament, he couldn't stop the Latvian's race to the post in the end. Tal went on to play the World Championship in 1960 and beat Botvinnik.
World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik
A memorable vignette on the 1959 Zürich tournament won by Tal"And then came Tal. He didn’t bother about correctness at all… I have witnessed it in Zürich, the growing unease as he sacrificed a piece or more in every game and won, while afterwards the entire affair turned out to have been highly dubious, if only the others had found the best moves during the game. During analysis it was clear that while Tal had calculated much, much deeper than the average player, he also had a tendency to be extremely optimistic about his own chances. It turned out, in fact, that in these post-mortems, when many hands were grabbing about the board, only Keres was able to hold his own against him. “But my dear friend, what is your reply to this?" and Tal laughing it off: “Who won?” |
In spite of his painful defeat Keres harboured no ill-will towards his young rival. He had known Tal since he was a lad of 18. They remained good friends till the end. Of course their rivalry over the board continued in the next Candidates' Tournament (Curacao 1962).This time it was Keres' turn to beat Tal:
The games between these great masters are a delight to watch and their camaraderie, a memory to be cherished.
Paul Keres and Misha Tal analyze together
Tal’s account of his performance in the Chess Olympiad, Skopje 1972I had managed to win all my games, but it is the resumption of with Radulov that I recall. We split up into groups for analysis and my consultant was Grandmaster Keres, our team’s trainer. I have quite a large number of chess memories, but that night of analysis with Keres is one of the most pleasant. The work was calm, flowing, as it were of its own accord; every hour a cup of coffee… And I never even suspected that such an apparently uninteresting ending – I was a pawn up with rooks and opposite-coloured bishops – could contain so many beautiful ideas Incidentally, the analysis proved to be highly productive … before the second resumption Radulov resigned without further play. |
