Tal the Positional Genius, and Karpov the Tactical Master
"Waaait a minute, I thought Karpov was the positional player, and Tal was the tactical one?"
While both World Champions were capable of both tactical and positional brilliancy, the common viewpoint on their play is that Karpov tended towards positional play, and Tal tended towards tactics. I firmly believe, and am here to make the point, that Karpov actually spent more of his time calculating the tactics, and Tal spent more of his time on positional concerns. Tal's beautiful sacrifices only came because he milked his position to the point sacrifices were possible, and Karpov rarely allowed his opponents to win in tactical fashion because he saw and prevented the tactics. I've left my own analysis of these positions out of the equation so readers can enjoy exploring the positions themselves. There's much to be gained by flipping through the games until an interesting position is reached, and then doing your own analysis, with or without an engine. Many of the tactical lines Karpov had to see to play his moves were quite beautiful, and the nonsense the engine has to play to get out of Tal's madness is astounding.
Karpov had a tendency toward dry, slow, "positional" games, but even in slow positions, he was in command of the tactics. Many games seemed dry and slow, because Karpov prevented his opponents from launching mad sacrificial attacks. Even in the Sicilian against Garry Kasparov, one of the most tactical openings from perhaps the most tactical attacking genius ever, Karpov had control of the tactics. From their first World Championship match:
Tal, on the other hand, was OK with not having tactical control of a position. He embraced unclear positions where both players had advantages they might be able to convert, where both players were unable to calculate the tactics completely in a classical game. A huge portion of this does come down to tactics, there's no denying that Tal was one of the best calculators ever. But he would also play moves without completely calculating them, he would play moves that might not be the best, without proper calculation, because it gave him positional advantages. Maybe his opponent can refute them, maybe not, but Tal is hoping to make the game so confusing that his opponents blunder. To quote Tal himself, "You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest, where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one." Here's Tal sacrificing a piece for purely positional reasons against Bent Larsen, in their 1965 Candidates Match. Larsen promptly sacrificed the piece back in order to liberate his position.
There are far too many potential variations to calculate after Nd5 to know that it works. But that open e file is definitely nice for white, and black's pieces look a little silly now. Particularly the dark squared bishop on e7, I'm not sure what it will ever do. I would posit that Tal did not fully calculate Nd5, he played it for positional reasons, at a relatively low depth of calculation. Nd5 can't be calculated to be winning. But you can look at the resulting positions you're calculating, like white in all of them, and play it anyhow.
So, the ultimate test of my hypothesis that Tal was the positional player, not Karpov, and Karpov was the tactical player, not Tal: What happened in the games they played against each other? Unfortunately, as they were from different eras of chess, they did not have that many games against each other, but we do have a few decisive games between the two of them to examine. Karpov won one classical game, and they went 1-1 in the SWIFT blitz tournament of 1987. Note that this was 27 years after Tal's first WC match with Botvinnik, and only 12 years after Karpov gained the title of WC. At the time, Garry Kasparov was world champ, but Karpov was still near his prime, while Tal was much further removed from his peak. The game Karpov won in this blitz event:
Tal pushed, and pushed, but Karpov allowed nothing. Tal's rooks blockading in the middle of the board, Karpov ended up sacrificing an exchange for a few pawns and a drawing endgame, but no matter how hard Tal tried to get an attack going, Karpov prevented his threats. While the position was drawish, blitz clocks have been known to make fools of us all. So now lets see how Tal beat Karpov in the same tournament.
At the position after black's 23rd move, white is already down the exchange and a pawn, and Tal proceeds to sacrifice a whole rook, with check! And the bigger point for what I'm trying to say: Karpov accepted the rook. If Tal sacrificed the rook, and Karpov accepted it, they disagreed on the evaluation of 24. Ng3 Qxe1+. So lets ask a few questions: Why would Tal sacrifice a rook? Clearly he thought he had checkmating threats. Why did Karpov accept the rook? He calculated some lines and thought that the checkmating threats were not real. It's also rather hard to stop Qxh7# and also save the black queen simultaneously, after Ng3. Perhaps Karpov missed the Ng3 ideas before he played Qe5, or he calculated that Qe5 stops Ng3 because Qxe1 is too strong for black. It is a lot of material, to be fair, but white has a FANTASTIC position, despite white's lack of rooks.
Tal's exchange sacrifice on e6 was positional in nature. It didn't win on the spot: It was just better for white. White gains many advantages for the loss of material. Tal knows how to win a chess game with checkmate, and the doubling of the e pawns has a drastic effect on the black king's safety. Black might have two more rooks than white, but neither rook is preventing the black king from being checkmated. Karpov calculated that Qe5 pinning the knight to the rook was okay for black, Tal sacced his rook anyhow and thumbed his nose at Karpov.
Tactics and positional play are obviously intertwined in chess, both are necessary for the duration of every chess game. But what players focus on, their "Style" of play, can also be described. Karpov certainly had more long, dry, "positional" games than Tal, while Tal had more crazy sacrificial attacks. This might lead one to believe that Karpov was the positional player, and Tal the tactical one. But it seems to me that Karpov actually used tactics (and his utter control of the tactics) to get to winning positions slowly. He didn't lose on tactics often, he stopped all of the possible tactics, and just slowly improved his position when he didn't have a threat to stop. Tal, on the other hand, only got to the positions where he was able to execute his beautiful combinations, because of his amazing positional play. Tal's most famous victories are largely tactical in nature for the final few moves, but Karpov would never have reached those positions where sacrificial attacks were possible. It was Tal's positional play which allowed for his tactics, where Karpov's tactical control allowed him to gain better positions.
