Grandmaster games · World Championship match 1960
Tal's Knight on f4
Tal sacrifices a knight against the champion, Botvinnik slips with 23.Bd2, and both players then miss the same winning capture on move 25.
The setting
Moscow, 26 March 1960, game 6 of the world championship match between the champion Botvinnik and the challenger Tal. Tal won the first game of the match, and with this win the challenger stood two points ahead. Tal finished the match 12.5 to 8.5 ahead and took the title. The Wikipedia account records that the audience was so excited by the knight sacrifice on move 21 that the game was moved to a back room because of the noise. The score ends with 46...Kd4, when Botvinnik resigned. The Wikipedia table adds 47.Rd7 as a last move.
Why study it
It shows what a sacrifice can do even when the engine says it is not sound. Tal gives a knight on move 21 and the position becomes so complicated that Botvinnik drifts with 23.Bd2, then misses 25.Bxf3 for 25.Rxb2. Stockfish 19 checks every line both players calculate, and it disagrees with both of them: with Tal about the sacrifice and with Botvinnik about almost everything after move 22.
Live it from inside a mind
Each player speaks in the first person, in a voice of their own: what they see, what they fear, the lines they calculate, why they choose. Switch minds at any move.
Mikhail Botvinnik
White · Soviet Union
World champion, aged 48, defending the title won in 1948 and regained in 1958. A scientist of chess, known for deep home preparation and for planning a game from the structure outward.
Mikhail Tal
Black · Soviet Union
The 23-year-old challenger, who had won the 1959 Candidates tournament. Known for sacrifices that opponents could not refute over the board. Tal won this match and became the youngest world champion up to that time.
Game six of the match, with the white pieces. I am the champion, forty-eight years old, and Tal is twenty-three and plays for complications. I intend to answer with structure: take the centre, keep my pieces together and trade the dangerous ones. I will not play what I cannot calculate to the end.
Game six with Black in Moscow. Botvinnik is the champion and prepares every opening to the end; I am twenty-three and I want a fight. Against a controlled English I need to unbalance the game, put my pieces on active squares and give my opponent problems that cannot be solved by structure alone.
The game in 6 chapters
- 1
A flexible English, a sharp queen moves 1–9
Botvinnik opens with the English and builds a full centre against a King's Indian. Tal puts the queen on b6 at move 9, hitting b2 and d4 and asking White to decide about the centre.
- 2
d5 and the c-file moves 10–18
Botvinnik plays 10.d5 and trades Tal's knight on c5 with Ne1 and Nd3. Tal takes the c-file and doubles rooks. Both sides regroup: Botvinnik guards b2 and e4, Tal puts the knight on h5 to free the f-pawn.
- 3
f5 and the knight on f4 moves 19–22
Botvinnik plays 19.Kh2 and Tal breaks with ...f5. After exf5 Bxf5 Ra1 comes the sacrifice 21...Nf4, which Botvinnik accepts. Black's pawn lands on f4, attacking the bishop on e3.
- 4
Three errors in three moves moves 23–25
23.Bd2 lets Black off the hook, 23...Qxb2 walks into a trap that only 24...f3 escapes, and 25.Rxb2 misses the winning 25.Bxf3. Queens come off and the pawn lands on e2.
- 5
The pawn on e2 and the bishop pair moves 26–33
The pawn on e2 and the rook on d4 tie White down. Tal wins the exchange of rooks and White's bishop on e1, and ends with two bishops, a rook and an extra pawn.
- 6
The king walk moves 34–46
Botvinnik takes the pawns on b7 and a7, but Tal's bishops win the pawns on d5 and a2 and then the king walks to the centre. The passed pawn on c3 decides the game.