Petrosian - Estrin

after 17...Bg6

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18.Rxh7!

Take Botvinnik for example. He was known as a solid positional guy. Yet look at some of his early games and you'll see someone who can attack with the best of them.

Or Kasparov. He was known as the best attacker of his day. The guy who would unleash fire and brimstone at any opportunity, and yet look at game 24 in Seville when everything was on the line.

The point of all of this is to say that while Petrosian might have been known as the best defender of his era and the guy who risked little, the reality is that he was indeed a master tactician and would attack without mercy when the situation called for it.

Recall if you will Karpov's saying about if he saw two possible continuations and one led to a microscopic advantage but was easy to play, and the other was unclear but had extremely promising chances then he would take the former choice every single time.

All that means is that everything else being equal players like Petrosian would prefer to play in their usual solid style. Here, however, Petrosian saw weakness and went for the throat.

I wrote the following blog post about this game: www.ontheroadtochessmaster.com/petrosian-in-tals- -clothing/ and needed the pgn which brought me here.

A very good point, Chris. I once made the following point.

"If you are shown an individual game then you will never guess who the winner is. You need to see a series of 5 or 6 games to guess who is playing. In a single game Petrosian can play like Tal, and Tal like Petrosian."

Think I'm going with Petrosianic on this one. Doesn't feel super Tal-ish but is pure Petrosian.

Always thought Petrosian's big plus was spotting weaknesses. In both his own and opponents position. His skill was having the discipline to fix his weaknesses. What made him a WC was probably his ability to effectively, strategically exploit his opponents weaknesses.

Here, I'm guessing Petrosian thought he had significant winning chances and practically no losing chances after 7...Nd8. Probably figuring no way black is going ...0-0-0 and doubtful he'll leave the king in the center, and it's going to take some time to develop the kingside, and even then those pieces aren't going to be greatly placed.

Not a hard strategic plan to come up with. Use the time to get as many pieces aimed at the king assuming probable ...0-0 and bust up the f,g,h pawn formation. Given blacks bank rank and congestion, the number of defenders will probably have to be diminished.

After 17. Be4, seems you have five white pieces aimed at the weakened black king with maybe three defending. Plus it doesn't look to take long for white to get the other two involved. At the end, appears five white pieces attacking the king versus the one queen defender.