Tal is one of my favorite players, but this is not "quite obviously" true, nor is is he regarded as the greatest tactician. He was a brilliant tactician, no doubt, but one who relied heavily on intuition over calculation and as a result had a high percentage of unsound sacrifices. Players like Alekhine or Kasparov were, strictly speaking, more accurate tacticians and better at calculation than Tal. Tal's early "reign of terror" leading up to him becoming World Champion, forced the level of defense to improve in messy positions, and it did. Players like Korchnoi and Polugaevsky figured out not to "trust" Tal's calculation, consistently out-calculated him over the board and scored extremely well as a result.

Here we have Botvinnik, who was supposed to be the preeminent master of home preparation, treated like a patzer. Tal was well-prepared for this match. He writes that the Winawer came as no surprise to him, even though Botvinnik hadn't employed it in years.

All this discussion of 'tactical' vs 'positional' play at GM level is talk in a vacuum. When faced with a position in which a clear-cut, forcing process is required, the so-called positional player will play just as the 'tactician' will.

As noted in the excellent book Secrets of Grandmaster Play by Nunn and Griffiths from the mid 1980s, by definition, GMs are balanced and complete players, and differences in approach are a matter of style-no more than that.

<Andrewjsacks> Botvinnik was a virtuoso at preparation; it's ridiculous for anyone to state that this aspect was overrated. He had a tremendous ability to learn from his defeats and adapt to circumstances, as Lasker had before him.

<OneArmedScissor> Maybe you'd like to be such a failure as Leko.

(a) Super GMs are immensely strong in all areas of the game.

(b) Super GMs have different styles.

(c) Their styles reflect the Super GMS' personalities and preferences but also, to some extent their perception of their relative strength in different areas. For example, Tal would not have aimed at sharp irrational positions so often if he didn't think he was stronger in them than his opponents. He says so himself often in L&GofMT.

(d) Such perceptions of relative strength may not be unerring, but they are likely to be pretty accurate, based as they are on years of experience and forming as they do a key element of Super GM strategy.

Therefore I disagree with the statement "All of the World Champions and Elite players are on the same level tactically" (<Poisonpawns>)

All the elite players are amazingly strong tactically, but there are small and important differences.

Kasparov said of his "Centaur Chess" with Kramnik that he found it much harder to play Kramnik when they both had computers because it eliminated his largest advantage- that he was quicker and more reliable at calculating.

- Mikhail Tal

"I have to admit to the reader that my frame of mind prior to the first game was not particularly optimistic; there was good reason for this. The fact was that in the preceding years I had developed the 'nice' habit of beginning a tournament with a loss. The 25th USSR Championship, the International Tournament in Zurich, the USSR Peoples' Spartakiad, and finally the Candidates Tournament -- I think this list is quite sufficient. Besides, this had become so ingrained in me, that the result of the first game did not come as a surprise either to me, to my opponent, who turned up for the game to receive his 'due' point, or to my friends, who began listening to chess reports and buying bulletins only after the second round. One of my friends (I don't know whether he was being serious) suggested that I should simply not turn up for the start of the match, but should join at the second game. Who knows, I might have followed his advice had it not been for an old story which accidentally impressed itself on my mind. It is well known that in train crashes it is the rear coaches that come off worst. At a meeting where the question of eliminating the cause of such calamities was being discussed, a wise old signal operator suggested: let's just uncouple the last coach, and let the train go without it. As you can see, these two solutions are almost equally profound..."

Tal then goes on to state that... "At the conclusion of the Candidates Tournament in Belgrade, a Yugoslav radio commentator had asked me: 'What will you play on the first move of your first game with Botvinnik?' I then promised to begin by moving my e pawn, and, of course, I did not want to break my word for no special reason; besides, the move 1. e4 is not bad in itself."

In The French , White is able to have the superior center. Black needs to analyze which side of the board White is controlling.

And, then, Black needs to Castle AWAY from it.