More Taimanov Obituaries
Wednesday, November 30, 2016 at 10:43AM
Dennis Monokroussos in Mark Taimanov

Here's a very good one from Leonard Barden, who even played Mark Taimanov in a 1954 USSR-Britain match. (HT: Marc Beishon) To Barden's credit, he addresses the controversial matter of Taimanov's last-round win from the 1970 Interzonal:

In 1970, at the age of 44, Taimanov controversially became a world title candidate for the second time. His final round opponent at the Palma interzonal, the Yugoslav Milan Matulović, played feebly and at great speed, and Taimanov won easily. A rumour sprung up that Matulović had sold the point for $400, though most blamed Soviet officials rather than Taimanov himself.

I hadn't previously seen the blame going to the officials, so I hope that if the game was fixed Taimanov himself had no knowledge of it. I've never heard of any other controversies or shenanigans in his career, so one can hope that he was innocent in this case as well. If not, he was properly repaid by losing to Fischer 6-0 and in the aftermath he suffered from the Soviet authorities until Larsen also got bagled by Fischer, 6-0, in the next round of the Candidates.

Barden also repeats the oft-repeated claim that Taimanov missed a win in game 3 of the Fischer match:

Taimanov had what he thought was a winning position in game three, only to find his attack stalled. Frustrated, he avoided a critical line and lost.

Ten years later, he finally worked out how he could have won.

This is not so. Barden was right to mention Taimanov's claim, as the match was a significant part of the latter's career and he often repeated the claim. But the last sentence of the quote is simply wrong: Taimanov did not work out how he could have won, because there was no win - as numerous analysts have shown, and as can be confirmed with the engine.

One might charitably suppose that Taimanov was right as a practical matter: had he played the right move - 20.Qh3, in case you're wondering - then while the engine may claim that Black (Fischer) is fine, he wouldn't have been able to hold just using his flesh-and-blood resources alone. To this argument, three replies. First, the claim as uttered by Taimanov and repeated by Barden is still technically false. Second, if one is speaking about "practical chances", then how "practical" is analysis Taimanov needed ten years to work out? And third, Black's defense doesn't rest on spectacular or subtle computer moves; it's just that the computer confirms the reliability of Black's position.

I'll also note Chess24's obituary, which is mostly a repeat of the author's (Colin McGourty's) Chess in Translation interview from 2011, linked to in my initial obituary a couple of days ago. There are some neat tidbits added at the start of the new piece though, so it's still worth a quick look even if you read the older piece.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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