In the last round of 1978 USSR Championship 15-year-old Garry Kasparov who was competing at that strong event for the first time faced the 8th World Chess Champion Mikhail Tal. The Exchange variation of Ruy Lopez led to quick simplifications and on move 17 having a completely equal position on the board the players agreed to a draw . Thus Mikhail Tal secured himself the first place while Kasparov landed in the 9th place! After shaking hands they moved to press center and asked for a chess clock. A blitz match of 14 games would soon start driving the attention of everyone passing nearby. Time passed and those games were considered to be lost until in 2019 Alexander Nikitin published them in his book Coaching Kasparov, Year by Year and Move by Move. It turns out that when they returned to their hotel room Nikitin gave Kasparov an exercise book and the future world chess champion wrote down the annotations of all those 14 games without looking at the board. I bought that book and now we can enjoy those games together.
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Mikhail Tal vs Garry Kasparov
Friendly Blitz Match, Tbilisi (1978), Game 1
B96 Sicilian Defense: Najdorf Variation, Polugaevsky Variation
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 b5 8. e5
dxe5 9. fxe5 Qc7 10. Qe2 Nfd7 11. O-O-O Bb7 12. Qg4 Qb6 13. Be2 Nxe5 14. Qh3 Nbd7 15. Rhe1 h6 16. Bf4 Bc5 17. Nxe6 fxe6 18. Bh5+ Ke7 19. Bxe5 Nxe5 20. Rxe5 Rhf8 21. Qg3 g5 22. Qd3 Kf6 23. Rde1 Rg8 24. Qh7
1-0
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Video Thumbnail Credits:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mikhail_Tal_1982.jpg
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kasparov-8.jpg
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#chess #mikhailtal #kasparov
