Fix My Chess
A Fix My Chess master
Tal
The Magician of Riga
“Let them calculate. I would rather set you problems no one can solve over the board.”
What it cures in your game
If your dominant leak is missed tactics, Tal is your antidote. The way he plays — the same you see in these games — is exactly what you need to internalize. In Fix My Chess you choose him as your master and train under his style, game by game, until that leak closes.
His life in chapters
- 1936–1956
The boy from Riga
Riga, Latvia. I was a sickly child with a hand that never formed fully — and a head that saw combinations everywhere. At the chess club of the Young Pioneers they could not get the board away from me. By my teens I was playing for Latvia; the storm was gathering.
- 1957–1959
The rise — two Soviet crowns
At 20 I won the championship of the strongest chess nation on earth — and then I won it again. They said my sacrifices were unsound. They kept having to prove it over the board, and they kept failing. The Candidates of 1959 sent me, the youngest of all, to face Botvinnik.
- 1960–1961
The crown at 23
Moscow, 1960. Botvinnik was science; I was fire. Six games up, I became the youngest world champion the game had known. A year later, ill and careless, I lost the rematch. I never wore the crown again — and I never stopped being dangerous.
- 1962–1992
The eternal magician
Three decades of tournaments, hospitals, and beauty. Between operations I set records nobody asked a sick man to set — including the longest unbeaten runs the game had seen. They called my play a museum of sacrifices. I called it chess.
Is this your master?
Diagnose your latest games and find out which master cures your dominant leak. Free, in a minute, no account.