Mikhail Tal Quotes

#1. I will not hide the fact that I love to hear the spectators react after a sacrifice of a piece or pawn. I don't think that there is anything bad in such a feeling; no artist or musician is indifferent to the reactions of the public.

Mikhail Tal

#2. Fischer is the greatest genius to descend from the chess heavens.

Mikhail Tal

#3. As long as my opponent has not yet castled, on each move I seek a pretext for an offensive. Even when I realize that the king is not in danger.

Mikhail Tal

#4. You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one

Mikhail Tal

#5. I believe most definitely that one must not only grapple with the problems on the board, one must also make every effort to combat the thoughts and will of the opponent.

Mikhail Tal

#6. Quiet moves often make a stronger impression than a wild combination with heavy sacrifices.

Mikhail Tal

#7. Fischer is Fischer, but a knight is a knight!

Mikhail Tal

#8. Many Chess players were surprised when after the game, Fischer quietly explained: 'I had already analyzed this possibility' in a position which I thought was not possible to foresee from the opening

Mikhail Tal

#9. Botvinnik's right! When he says such things, then he's right. Usually, I prefer not to study chess but to play it. For me chess is more an art than a science. It's been said that Alekhine and I played similar chess, except that he studied more. Yes, perhaps, but I have to say that he played, too.

Mikhail Tal

#10. Young man, consider that the train has left, and all you can do is loudly slam the door in farewell.

Mikhail Tal

#11. Some sacrifices are sound; the rest are mine

Mikhail Tal

#12. If you wait for luck to turn up, life becomes very boring.

Mikhail Tal

#13. ...That is my biography from the first day of my chess life to the present.

JOURNALIST. And your plans.
PLAYER. To play!

Mikhail Tal

#14. When I asked Fischer why he had not played a certain move in our game, he replied: 'Well, you laughed when I wrote it down!'

Mikhail Tal

#15. In my games I have sometimes found a combination intuitively simply feeling that it must be there. Yet I was not able to translate my thought processes into normal human language.

Mikhail Tal

#16. Just as one's imagination is stirred by a girl's smile, so is one's imagination stirred by the possibilities of chess.

Mikhail Tal

#17. If (Black) is going for victory, he is practically forced to allow his opponent to get some kind of well-known positional advantage.

Mikhail Tal

#18. Without technique it is impossible to reach the top in chess, and therefore we all try to borrow from Capablanca his wonderful, subtle technique.

Mikhail Tal

#19. Of course, errors are not good for a chess game, but errors are unavoidable and in any case, a game without ant errors, or as they say 'flawless game' is colorless.

Mikhail Tal

#20. I go over many games collections and pick up something from the style of each player.

Mikhail Tal

#21. Naturally, the psychological susceptibility of a match participant is significantly higher than a participant in a tournament, since each game substantially changes the over-all position.

Mikhail Tal

#22. I have always thought it a matter of honour for every chess player to deserve the smile of fortune.

Mikhail Tal

#23. The cherished dream of every chessplayer is to play a match with the World Champion. But here is the paradox: the closer you come to the realization of this goal, the less you think about it.

Mikhail Tal

#24. There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine

Mikhail Tal

#25. I like to grasp the initiative and not give my opponent peace of mind.

Mikhail Tal

#26. To play for a draw (at any rate with White) is to some degree a crime against chess.

Mikhail Tal

#27. For pleasure you can read the games collections of Andersson and Chigorin, but for benefit you should study Tarrasch, Keres and Bronstein.

Mikhail Tal

#28. First, how to sac my queen, then rook, then bishop, then knight, then pawns.

Mikhail Tal

#29. Later, I began to succeed in decisive games. Perhaps because I realized a very simple truth: not only was I worried, but also my opponent

Mikhail Tal

#30. It is difficult to play against Einstein's theory -on his first loss to Fischer

Mikhail Tal