On Apr 27, 7:54 am, David Richerby
wrote:
help bot wrote:

A silly statement. As we saw, the wild, attacking style of GK gave
GM Karpov a very hard time, except for their very first match. How
was GM Tal, in his prime, all that different from GM Kasparov?

Tal sacrificed for the attack; Kasparov sacrificed for the initiative,
according to somebody I read.

They say there's a fine line between love and hate,
but *this* is really splitting hairs. Obviously, the
road to attack is paved with stones bearing the label:
"gain the initiative".


Tal and Kasparov were dramatically
different in style. Quite apart from anything else, Kasparov's play
is much more sound than Tal's.

Perhaps. But I know of one game where GM Kasparov
sacked an entire Rook for nothing more than a few spite
checks -- and this is about as unsound as it gets with
these guys. And that game was hardly an exception,
apart from the rarity of winning a full Rook down at that
level despite the idiotic attack.


Of course, Tal's play was sound enough
to win in many cases; who needs to be more sound than that?

It depends mainly on whom you are playing. For
instance, against DeepFritz, it would be wise to refrain
from unsound sacrifices altogether.


Another example was the cool, calm, collected Bobby Fischer, who was
overwhelmed by GM Tal in his prime

You mean the +4-2=5 career record

Lapsing beyond well GM Tal's prime now, and into GM
Fischer's. In between there were, I believe, three other
world champions.


(excluding the two blitzgames at
Herzeg Novi, which were both won by Fischer and which were ten years
after the rest of the games) in Tal's favour?

No, I was talking about GM Tal's prime, just as I wrote.
The year 1959 leaps to mind.


[GM Fischer] calmly observed after the fact that GM Tal's
hyper-aggressive play was "unsound".

Tal never claimed to be sound.

Who cares? You are beginning to sound like Taylor
Kingston, who wishes to substitute mere hearsay for hard
evidence. As I see it, it makes no difference what GM
Tal said; he either was, or he wasn't, sound; and on top
of this, he is to be disqualified on the basis of knowing
himself personally.


He just claimed to be sound enough to
be very difficult to beat over the board.

This is immaterial to what I was talking about, although
it might prove relevant to a discussion of GM Tal's
humility.

-- help bot