Should Chess Players Take Crazy Risks?

I don't like popular disputes where people compare legendary champions from the past to modern players. In my opinion, such discussions are silly and pointless. Besides, there is no way to prove your opinion is right or wrong. That's why I just smiled when I recently saw a Facebook post of a well-known grandmaster who claimed that if Jose Raul Capablanca played in today's tournaments, his FIDE rating would be around 2400.

However, when I saw another big discussion about different chess styles, it made me think. The consensus of high-rated titled players was that players from the past, like GM Mikhail Tal, wouldn't survive in today's top tournaments. Modern top players grew up with chess engines and calculate quite well. Therefore, bluffing, which was a common element of Tal's combinations, simply wouldn't work against them.

Such a statement has a much better point than the "Capablanca would be a 2400 player today" nonsense. So, if Tal, in his prime, played today, would he be in the top five in the world? My personal opinion is yes, but if I am wrong and his chess approach is hopelessly obsolete, it would be a very sad reality for chess.

Today, I would like to discuss just one example of his brilliant play. In my opinion, it demonstrates that while his way of playing chess might look very impractical, it wasn't as naive as it might look. Take a look at the following position:

White has more space and two bishops, so he can play for a win almost with no risk. A truly dream scenario for a Candidate's match game. An engine claims a clear advantage after 15.Qh5 g6 16.Qf3 with an evaluation close to +1. Tal himself, in his annotations, said that after 15.a3 (preparing the c4 push at the right moment), White can hope to use his advantage of two bishops in a long maneuvering play.

And then he asks a question:  Black's king has been sitting in the center for 14 moves already. Can't White take advantage of this somehow and, by doing so, also dramatically change the path of the game? And this is how he came up with the idea of a rook sacrifice. Now, let's see the variations that he calculated. First, he dismissed 17...Kd8 since White would have a forced draw:

Tal said that he didn't see more than a draw in this variation but hoped that his opponent would try to punish him for this risky rook sacrifice and, therefore, would avoid this line. Therefore, he expected that Black would play 17...Be7 instead, and here is what he prepared in this case:

Now let's see what actually happened in the game:

Now, let's analyze what happened at the game's critical moment when Tal decided to sacrifice a rook. He had a very simple way to play that would ensure a stable, long-lasting advantage with no real risk of losing. Instead, Tal preferred a Rook sacrifice, where the opponent could immediately make a draw, but Tal, "the Magician," hoped that he wouldn't take it.

And even if Black indeed preferred to avoid the draw, there was still a significant risk for Tal to miscalculate in the ocean of variations (in fact, Tal indeed made a big mistake in one of the lines after 17...Be7). Therefore, Tal's risk-to-reward ratio was extremely bad. Yet, he took a risk, won the game, and added a sparkling brilliancy to his chess heritage. 

Now let's think what could have happened if he hadn't taken this crazy risk and played a sophisticated way, just like 99% of other grandmasters would. Is there any guarantee that he would've won? Of course not, especially considering that his opponent, GM Lajos Portisch, was an excellent positional player. The following game demonstrates what could have happened if Tal hadn't sacrificed his rook.

As you can see, White didn't sacrifice a rook and kept his small positional advantage until the end of the game. As a matter of fact, even in the final position, where the opponents agreed to a draw, an engine claims White's advantage to be +0.25.

Now let's see what might have happened if he had taken a risk and sacrificed a-la Tal:

Unlike the original game by Tal, the sacrifice was objectively the best way to continue here, but of course, this is not always the case.

Again, you can see how GM Larry Christiansen, just like Tal, eschewed a guaranteed small advantage in favor of a risky sacrifice that would lead only to a draw if Black played correctly. And just like Tal, his brave play was rewarded with a beautiful win.

Returning to the question in the title of this article, let me reiterate: an "impractical choice" of taking a risk might be a good practical decision in a tournament game. When your opponent must find a hidden sequence of moves under intense psychological pressure in a limited amount of time, such a daring sacrifice is always a serious psychological blow!