Known as “The Magician from Riga“, Mikhail Tal was the archetype of the attacking player, he’s famous for often sacrifices his pieces that create vast complications and hard to defend over the board.
Today, with modern computers, we know that many of his speculative sacrifices were inaccurate and should have lost. Nevertheless, he had a daring style of play, and that was very intimidating for those who played against him.
Tal not only often sacrifices his pawn, knight, or bishop, he also often sacrifices his queen beautifully. Here’s a breakdown of Tal’s top 5 queen sacrifices:
Tal himself said “There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones, and mine.”
However, it was not easy, even for the world’s best players, to refute these sacrifices over the board, and some analysts were unable to show why or how Tal could have been defeated.
