The Magic Tactics of Mikhail Tal: Learn from the Legend Paperback – December 16, 2012

Most of us will never be 2000+ players. We just enjoy playing and what better enjoyment is there,than to play like Tal. You'll develop a Tal like attack and sacrifice style by reading this. I play players inour club, rated from 1300 to 1700. I'm about a 1550 player. I've beaten/checkmated them all in 8 moves of less, eventhe 1700 player. (he's a pure positional player and doesn't know what a sac is) And what fun and enjoyment those gamesare!

This is one of the very best books ever written on Mikail Tal. The human side as well as the great games and brilliance of his play. The authors are very objective and present chess as it really is in the tournament circuit. Tal's combos were not always perfect but it is refreshing to see the authors pointing that out in some of his combinations and piece sacrifices where a defense was available but Tal's opponent would crack under the terrible pressure Tal would put you under. All in all a superlative work on a very great Chess player. Bravo!

I bought this book on an impulse. I was in a hurry and didn't carefully look inside. What I was hoping for was a biography of Tal, whose games have always entertained me. I thought the games included were to demonstrate various periods of his development, which they seem to be. I will read it through of course, but it will take a bit longer if I try to play all the games, so I will have to skim. I'd give it a 5 Star if I had read the entire book. I'll revise my rating later.His 'sacrifices' have always intrigued me and obviously his opponents!

I play chess since the 10 years old, and just now in my 44 years old, I found this magnific and beatiful book.it's a pity have this book now and not in my childhood.M.Tal was my hero and now with this book is my master too. Really thanks Mr. Muller for write this book for all the chessplayers of the world and for the next generations of players.I shall save this book in a very special part of my life.

Mikhail Tal is my favourite chess player. He played because he loved the game, not to earn titles. His passion and love for the game comes through in his adventures at the board.This book is one of the few to capture the personality and flavor he brought to the most pedestrian positions by usually engaging in an explosive tactical strategy that completely confounded his opponents. I particularly enjoyed the opinion of other grandmasters.

Hi,I love this book.I am very interested about the character of the player.In this book they have a great balance of exercises andreal personal details from numerous players, that describe their personal encounters with Tal.This makes it a very special account of Tal's legacy.

I got this book for a last minute x-mas gift for a friend and it came before expected arrival. And was in excellent condition.

This is a very uneven book. It does have beautiful combinations and incredible sacrifices - after all, it is about Tal, the ultimate wizard of tactics. However, it does have quite a few flaws.First of all, I was disappointed with the purely chess content of the book. Most of the time, the games are given without annotations, until the moment that the key combination or attack took place. Even then the annotations are brief and often quoted from other sources, such as Tal's own books, or Kasparov's "My Great Predecessors" etc. The full score is missing for about half of the games.A big chunk of the book is devoted to personal reminiscences about Tal by people who knew him or played against him. These came from the interviews that were taken specially for this book, usually centered around one or few games that the interviewee played versus Tal. The book is clearly influenced by the fact that it was written by German authors, so about half of these interviews come from German players (the other half is former Soviet players). To my taste, there were too many references to Germany. It felt a little odd, as if I was reading "Tal through the eyes of German chess players". A lot of space is also given to explaining the peculiarities of chess life in Soviet Union. This was not really interesting for me, as I experienced it first-hand, but I guess that it could amuse the readers that grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain.Another oddity that I need to mention is a chapter about the game Tal-Keller, which was written by Grandmaster Huebner. It is indeed a famous game with wild complications that has been analyzed again and again. Dr. Huebner is doing what he does best, filling 40+ pages with countless variations. However, the contrast between Dr. Huebner's extensive annotations (taking up almost 15% of the whole book for just one game!) and rather scanty comments in all other chapters could not be starker. I am not sure how many people actually find the courage to get through Dr. Huebner's analysis, but it sure stands out as something really different, almost alien from the rest of the book.This book still makes for a few hours of entertaining reading and challenging tactical riddles. And yes, Tal's games and combinations are immortal, so a book about Tal can never be bad. However, I was not completely satisfied with this one. I think that it could be an OK introduction for someone who never read anything about Tal, but there are probably very few chess players that fall into this category. Even in that case I would probably suggest to start with Tal's own "Life & Games". Another possible use for this book could be as a set of puzzles for someone who wants to train his or her own tactical vision, but I think there are better books for that purpose as well.