On Apr 26, 5:09 pm, Ron wrote:

That's total rubbish "Ron". You're obviously someone who doesn't know much
about the game of chess. Tal didn't set out to make errors, with the
lamebrain idea that this would somehow cause his opponents to make bigger
errors. Tal set out to create COMPLICATIONS for his opponents. Obviously Tal
desired for all of his sacrifices to be sound and forcing, but no human can
calculate everything to the end, so computer analysis has shown flaws in
many of his games. This is meaningless, because he wasn't playing against
computers.

Have you read Tal's books?

I have. There are many time when he says things like, "It's clear 36. f4
was stronger," (Tal-Gligoric, Zagreb 59), or see his note to 5. ... Qc7
in Tal-Olaffson, Bled 1961 (a move he describes as "bad" - but that he
clearly made intentionally) or, say, 10. a3 in Tal-Bagirov,
Dnepropetrosk, 1970, which he describes as "in no way stronger than the
approved Re1."

(I found these notes by basically opening "The Life and Games of Mikhail
Tal" at random. Stuff like this is all over that book. You should try
reading it sometime, before you talk about what Tal was, or wasn't,
thinking. His book on his match with Botvinnik goes into even more depth
on his thinking, again, and does a good job explaining the emphasis Tal
put of psychology over soundness. And what is psychology, in chess,
other than playing an inferior move which you think your opponent will
respond badly too. In particular, I'd point you to his discussion of his
12th move of game 17.)

It's clear from his notes that he doesn't care if his sacrifices were
"correct" or not. He made a move - which he knew could well be unsound -
with the expectation that in the resulting position his opponents would
play incorrectly.

Mr. Mitchell has made a serious error here in
equating game commentary after the fact with
what a player may have been thinking at the
time.

All of these games have been annotated --
often after looking at notations by others -- by
such players as GM Tal. This in no way means
that if, say, GM Kortchnoi said move x was
better and then GM Tal wrote in his book that
move x was better (since he agreed), that at
the time the game was played GM Tal *saw*
that move x was better, but deliberately chose
to play a stupid move instead!

On the contrary, in match one against GM
Botvinnik, GM Tal often points out that he had
to choose a different line because his old
choice had failed the last time out. In effect,
he readily admits when his openings were poor,
despite having won the game anyway.

Besides, those books on GM Tal, by GM Tal,
were all written by someone we now know to be
a horrible patzer, thanks to crippled-Crafty! :D

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