Collin Madhavan playing against Mikhail Tal
photo from themalaysian.com
I was really happy when I read an interesting article by Collin Madhavan in themalaysian.com about a GM’s Simultaneous held at Shah Alam in 1990. Actually, in 1992, I was told by my friend - Johan Ghani from Sultan Salahuddin, Shah Alam School that he once play with Smbat Lputian way back in the 90’s. The simul also included famous and strong GM’s like Tal, Smyslov and others but I could hardly believe it because I think to gather all those famous and strong GM’s to come to Malaysia would be an “impossible” task. But I was proven wrong. The event really happen. You can read the full article here
I think it was a honour for Collin and anybody to have a chance to play against Tal. Tal will always be my favourites chessplayer. Below are an intresting story about the legendary Tal.
"Tal was so intimidating in those years that he made seasoned Grandmaster opponents shudder with fear. A case in point is a game played between GM Tal (as Black) and Hungarian GM Pal Benko (as White) at the Interzonal Tournament in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1959. This was the third cycle (the first two were played in Bled and Zagreb, respectively), and Benko was starting to think that Tal had been hypnotizing him due to his poor record against him so far. So Benko took with him sunglasses and wore them while at the chessboard. But Tal, who had heard of Benko's plan to wear sunglasses before the game started, borrowed enormous dark glasses from GM Petrosian. When Tal put on these ridiculously enormous glasses, not only did the spectators laugh, but other participants in the tournament did, as did the tournament controllers, and finally even Benko himself laughed. But unlike Tal, Benko did not remove his glasses until the 20th move when his position was hopeless"
Read it the full article here
By the way Collin, my friend told me that Mikhail Tal actually have three of his finger stick at each other, is it true?
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