Tal-Botvinnik 1960

     What a year 1960 was! John F Kennedy was elected president and the U.S. entered the Vietnam War with the announcement that 3,500 soldiers were going to be sent there...just as advisers, of course. The Soviets shot down a U2 spy plane that President Eisenhower had assured everybody wasn’t flying over Russia. Fidel Castro nationalized American Oil, sugar and other US interests in Cuba. 
     Aluminum cans were introduced and Xerox introduced the first photocopier...no more mimeographs, a stencil duplicator that worked by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. 
     On brighter notes, Chubby Chequer started a new dance craze called The Twist. There were only three television channels and aside from politicians coming to the realization that TV was great for campaigning, spreading lies in en mass and slinging mud, we were watching Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel, The Andy Griffith Show, The Real McCoys, Rawhide, Candid Camera, The Untouchables, The Price Is Right, and The Jack Benny Show. 
     What was going on in the chess world? In the St. Louis at the U.S. Open, Detroit Master Paul Poschel came within a whisker of winning only he couldn’t convert a favorable last-round position against Robert Byrne and had to settle for a draw. As a result Byrne took first by a half point ahead of Pal Benko and Poschel. 
     In the summer of 1960, for the first and only time, the US won a world team championship, the World Student Team Championship at Leningrad, ahead of the USSR. The US team consisted of Raymond Weinstein, Eliot Hearst, William Lombardy, Charles Kalme, Edmar Mednis and Anthony Saidy. 
     Equally exciting was the mid-Summer match between Fischer and Reshevsky. Then with the score tied after 11 games Booby Fischer established a pattern that he was to continue the rest of his life...he walked out. 

     Fischer won his fourth straight U.S. Championship, also a Zonal, ahead of William Lombardy and Raymond Weinstein. The players’ ratings were Fischer (2641), Reshevsky (2632), Lombardy (2555), R. Byrne (2535), Benko (2501), Bisguier (2501), Weinstein (2448), Seidman (2417), Saidy (2412), Sherwin (2411), Berliner (2406) and Kalme (2374). 
     Fischer, Lombardy and Weinstein qualified for the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal, but Weinstein had college exams and Lombardy had just become a priest so Bisguier and Benko went in their place. 
     The 1960 World Championship between Mikhail Botvinnik and Mikhail Tal that was played in Moscow from March 15 to May 7, 1960 was an exciting affair. Botvinnik, the reigning champion, was the favorite, but Tal won the match decisively by a margin of 4 points. 

     Tal was criticized because only on month after the Candidates tournament he played in a relatively unimportant international tournament in Riga that was won by Spassky and Mikenas. And, it turned out that in Riga instead of the impressive swashbuckling attacks for which Tal had become famous, he was on the defensive in most of his games at at no time was he in any position to challenge the leaders. Actually, this tournament was part of Tal’s preparation for the match. 
     In their preparation Tal and his second, Alexander Koblencs, determined that if Botvinnik obtained the initiative in the opening, he was deadly, but in tactical situations be was less sure of himself. Also, it was clear that Botvinnik often accepted a slight advantage in the ending where his great skill in that area would result in success. 
     But, their most important discovery was that during a game, Botvinnik gave most of his consideration to strategy and was rarely distracted by tactical variations. While this had its advantages, it also had a big disadvantage in that sometimes Botvinnik tended to underestimate tactical possibilities. 
    The game featured here saw Tal a full point ahead, but he was not satisfied with his play because in the last four games Botvinnik had been able to direct the game into his favorite channels and seize the initiative. As a result, Tal and Koblencs decided that changes had to be made and a big part of that decision was what opening should Tal play? 
    The Modern Benoni and Nimzo-Indian had not produced satisfactory results, so it was decided that another double-edged defense should be tried and the classical King’s Indian was decided upon. The reason for that decision was that Botvinnik usually selected an old fashioned continuation that involved fianchettoing his light-squared f1 Bishop which Tal didn’t think gave white any advantage. 
     FYI Antonio Radic ( aka AGADMATOR) is a Croatian Candidate Master, whose main work is his Youtube channel. He has the largest YouTube chess channel as of January 2020, with over 546,000 subscribers.