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| Feb-05-09 | | TheChessGuy: An unusual opening choice from the usually positional Portisch. It definitely paid off! |
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| Feb-05-09 | | Once: Can anyone explain the pun? |
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| Feb-05-09 | | Jim Bartle: "Port of call" is the term for a port where a ship docks. |
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Feb-05-09
 | | Jimfromprovidence: I wonder why white did not play Qxd6+ on move 29 or 30. These moves look as least as good as the text ones. Black recognizes his king's vulnerability when he plays 31...Ka8. |
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| Feb-05-09 | | WhiteRook48: to see Tal, master of chess, get zapped by a pin is unthinkable |
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Feb-05-09
 | | al wazir: <cydmd: have you considered the move 41.Rd8+ ?> 41...Ka7. |
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| Feb-05-09 | | DarthStapler: Boo! I hate it when Tal loses |
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| Feb-06-09 | | M.D. Wilson: When he lost, he usually lost well, if you know what I mean. |
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| Feb-06-09 | | euripides: <Jim> wouldn't 29.Qxd6+ invite Black to get the B+Q battery a couple f moves earlier than he does ? e.g. <29.Qxd6+> Bc7 30.Qd1 Qe5 31.g3 Bb7 and BLack's threats look quite nasty. |
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| Feb-06-09 | | euripides: ...I think the idea of 31...Ka8 is probably to allow Bb7 without falling into Nd7+. |
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Feb-06-09
| | Jimfromprovidence: <Euripides Jim wouldn't 29.Qxd6+ invite Black to get the B+Q battery a couple f moves earlier than he does ? e.g. <29.Qxd6+> Bc7 30.Qd1 Qe5 31.g3 Bb7 and BLack's threats look quite nasty.> I looked at that threat but I'm not sure of the effect. If 29 Qxd6+ Bc7, white also has 30 Qd3. Now, if 30...Qe5 white has 31 g3 (below) or 31 Qh3. 
click for larger view The position is unclear to me at this point.
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| Feb-07-09 | | euripides: <Jim> yes, 30.Qd3 is clearly an improvement on my 30.Qd1. I'm not sure whether your diagram is better than what White gets in the game - Black can play a mixture of Rd8, Bb7 and h5 - but I agree it doesn't seem worse. |
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| Jul-05-16 | | Howard: Just read the other day that Portisch could have forced mate in nine moves with 40...Qc3!! rather than 40...Qe5. But, since the move he actually played prompted immediate resignation, it obviously didn't matter. When I get time, I'll have to see if I can work out that nine-move mate. |
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| Dec-16-16 | | Howard: Regarding that February, 2009 comment about the opening choice being unusual for a positional player like Portisch, that was quite correct! CL&R made the comment in its "Game of the Month" column in 1976 that this was the first time Portisch had ever played the Poisoned Pawn with Black. |
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| Dec-16-16 | | Olavi: "A classical, positional plaer, he suddenly began playing very sharp variations of the Sicilian and gave a new impulse to his chess career, and prolonged his stay in the world elite." Michalchishin, New in Chess 1/1998 |
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| May-10-22 | | RookFile: Well, it's very smart by Portisch. You can't just sit back with black, take a beating, and hope you get a draw. There has to be at least a potential for a win in order to make your approach worth playing. |
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| Feb-26-25 | | Petrosianic: <euripedes> <A quick look at the 'similar games' column suggests that when White has given up the dark-squared bishop, he shouldn't hand Black more black squares with 13.f5.> I think that's right. A lot of White's problems seem to stem from Black having e5. But then how is White to play this? He never seems to have anything, and has the worse of it very early. <I wonder if Tal played a slightly unusual line here to avoid a bombshell in one of the main lines.> Maybe. I've never liked the 9. Nb3 line and prefer 9. Rb1 (although I don't really like that either). But if White is willing to decentralize his Knight at all, why not just play 8. Nb3 instead? Yeah, Black is supposed to lose time capturing the QNP, but his position seems solid enough if a top player is playing Black. I think Spassky was darn lucky that Fischer had an off day when they played this line. I don't see Tal winning this game with any Nb1 stuff. |
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| Feb-26-25 | | Petrosianic: I'm looking at the Opening Explorer's results for the position after Qb6. After 9. Qd2, White wins 30.3%, Black wins 30.7% After 9. Nb3, White wins 31.6%, Black wins 32.8%. The Opening Explorer can be misleading if there are too few examples, or if many games feature an obsolete line. But offhand, this just doesn't look good enough. White already seems to have lost the advantage of the first move. Maybe the problem is that 6. Bg5 just isn't the best line against the Najdorf. I'm looking through other Poisoned Pawn games, and White does often play f5, but usually the Black QN is captured on c6 first, preventing it from getting to e5. |
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Feb-26-25
 | | perfidious: <Petrosianic....Maybe the problem is that 6. Bg5 just isn't the best line against the Najdorf....> Maybe so, especially the way I played it vs Browne when I was rated ~1100. (laughs) |
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| Feb-27-25 | | phantasmagorium: Well, Folks, I wonder if anyone had mentioned this in previous comments (my ability to read carefully is suspect): https://en.chessbase.com/post/team-... This is a very interesting account of what happened. Apparently Portisch (true to his reputation as an opening prep maven, not necessarily to his rep as a play-it-safe player) outprepared Tal, and Tal was being careless (or was it overconfident?). Apparently, when this sort of thing happened, sometimes his "handlers" decided to take the fall. Wayward genius indeed, the great Tal |
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| Feb-27-25 | | Petrosianic: Was Tal being careless? Did he have reason to think Portisch would play the Poisoned Pawn Variation? Portisch, on the other hand, knew that he would and would have prepared it, probably more than Tal did. Had Tal won this game with White, Portisch would have been pretty well down and out. |
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| Feb-28-25 | | phantasmagorium: <Petrosianic> from the chessbase story, seems like Tal's second already had an inkling (crystal ball? Who knows), and asked Tal to play 8. Nb3. Dunno why - apparently he felt their prep on the poisoned pawn variation was not good enough. Tal chose the sharpest line (8. Qd2) though, and apparently he was woefully outprepared. |
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Feb-28-25
 | | Fusilli: Tal may have just trusted his tactical prowess, but Portisch was an extraordinary strategist. It's hard to keep an eye on the fundamentals of the position when things are complex. But the fundamentals (Tal's terrible pawn structure, bishop pair for Portisch, and the potential for eventual attack on the kingside supported by the LSB on the long diagonal) were all pointing at a Portisch kill if Tal didn't find a way to shake things up. |
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Feb-28-25
| | Fusilli: One thing I like about this game is that it demonstrates that the poison pawn variation doesn't just sac a pawn, but also the pawn structure, creating an isolated and backward c-pawn. |
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Feb-28-25
| | perfidious: The Poisoned Pawn is an extreme version of the typical Sicilian, which more or less forces White to attack, as the long-term positional factors favour Black. I have posted elsewhere of seeing games as late as the 1950s in which strong masters played the late opening and early middlegame passively and soon stood worse for no apparent reason. While I have not seen my copy in many years, one of Soltis' works from the 1970s featured Benko on the black side of one such Open Sicilian--believe it was a fairly ordinary Scheveningen against one of the stronger American players in a game played in the late 1950s. Benko's opponent played f2-f3 and developed, but with no clear middlegame plan. Benko came up with one, and rolled him. |
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