Some More Tal And Some Benoni Madness. My Week In Chess

Afternoon Everyone, and welcome to the chess I have been looking at this week - a bit of a Dylanesque chain of thought!!

O.K. A few days ago a friend of mine posted a nice game on twitter where he played a Knight sacrifice on f2. One game came to mind at once - indeed, I used the idea to win a correspondence game many years ago. One of those games of Tal that sticks in your head! I t was doubly there, because I had just done a post on Tal in that tournament! 

That game brought another one to mind. A game that just baffled me in my chess youth - today I understand it better. It must have caused quite a stir at the time - a world renowned Grandmaster falling under a sacrificial onslaught, with White.

O.K. Lots of Averbakh pictures to choose from, but this one - a really poignant image - seems appropriate at the moment. The Human race is very stupid - we just think that we are very clever - and never seems to learn from how stupid it has been in the past. As Lasker said 'in life, we are all duffers'.

In the comments to my small post on Bora Ivkov, this book got mentioned.

So I dug it out, and flicking through ended up at the point of the Benoni games.

A bit more Tal - this time on the losing end of things. The winner was this man, Enver Bukic.

And finally, some complete chess insanity. I love my chess battles and this one has more fight in it than a Saturday night out out in my local estate pub back in the 70's. It also has a really beautiful combination that I haven't gone fully into in the notes - you can look closer for yourself ( why should I do all the work!!)

The winner was this man - page taken from the above book.

That's it for today. Take care of yourselves. Chess seems a little pointless in the world as it is as I write this, but we are all one family, and it's O.K. to care about your family, imho.