Talk:Mikhail Tal

lengthy quote (about his personality)

His first wife, actress and singer Salli Landau, described Tal's personality:

Misha was so ill-equipped for living... When he travelled to a tournament, he couldn't even pack his own suitcase... He didn't even know how to turn on the gas for cooking. If I had a headache, and there happened to be no one home but him, he would fall into a panic: "How do I make a hot-water bottle?" And when I got behind the wheel of a car, he would look at me as though I were a visitor from another planet. Of course, if he had made some effort, he could have learned all of this. But it was all boring to him. He just didn't need to. A lot of people have said that if Tal had looked after his health, if he hadn't led such a dissolute life... and so forth. But with people like Tal, the idea of "if only" is just absurd. He wouldn't have been Tal then.

I think he had the soul of an actor. There was a reason why he always loved appearing as master-of-ceremonies. He needed an audience. He couldn't play without one - people inspired him.

I can't imagine him without a cigarette in his mouth - he'd smoke five packs a game! He never needed a lighter - he'd finish one, and light the next one from it. Most of his illnesses were inherited. When it came time for us to marry, a doctor from the Riga Special Clinic, where Dr. Nehemiah Tal once worked, told me that I shouldn't marry a man with that kind of health. He was always ill. And in the last years of his life, all his illnesses got worse. There were three whole years in which his temperature simply never went down. I have no idea how a man playing with a constant temperature of 38-39 degrees could become World Blitz Champion in 1988! And on May 28, 1992, at the Moscow blitz tournament, he became the only player to defeat Kasparov. I'm told he even left the hospital to play. The strongest chess-player in the world still lost to a dying Tal.

He was an unusual man. I miss him terribly. Sometimes I think that Misha flew in from another planet - just to play chess, and then fly home. He was asked once how he would categorize chess - is it a sport, or an art? He was simply exasperated: how can you call chess a sport? I don't know much about it myself - but they did call Tal the Mozart of chess. And he was a genial sort in real life, too. He was kind, cheerful, and never had a bad word to say about anyone.

I removed the above quote from the article because quotes of such length are against policy. A summary of the quote can be written and placed in the article. And it might be nice to add other details about his personality that don't come from Salli Landau. Kingturtle = (talk) 13:10, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Kingturtle - my suggestion if you don't like the length of a quote is not to remove it, but just trim out some of what you feel is unnecessary. If you just revert the addition, Wikipedia does not move forward, and you end up disrespecting the efforts of others. He was married to Salli for years. She is an excellent source on Tal. Billyshiverstick (talk) 17:02, 13 August 2024 (UTC) thanks for listening

References

"Every game"

"Every game, he once said, was as inimitable and invaluable as a poem." Is this a reference to every game of chess, or all of his games? Toccata quarta (talk) 07:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I think it refers to the games he played, because that is his way of approaching chess, and life. Billyshiverstick (talk) 16:59, 13 August 2024 (UTC) Other people's games are not his concern. Compare him to Tigrosian, lol.

'Personality' section removed

Article shortened and made less informative, I would argue unnecessarily, with this deletion Knot Lad (talk) 12:16, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

It was done by this change: [1] Bruce leverett (talk) 12:53, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm with you, knot. I hate wholesale deletions. You were on the right track. People would be better to build on what you did, or improve it, than revert. Billyshiverstick (talk) 16:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

It looks like the section consisted of a single quotation, which was appropriately sourced, so you could consider bringing it back. The editor who removed it suggested putting it in a "Personal life" section rather than a "Personality" section, which seems like a reasonable suggestion, since a lot of biographical articles about chess players have "Personal life" sections. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:12, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

No mention of his personal life?

There are a lot of stories about his relationships with his wife and other women. None of them appear. Sadly missing from this piece on his life. They are who he is. Billyshiverstick (talk) 16:37, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Quotations

I started a Wikiquote page for Mikhail Tal. I'm having trouble sourcing some of his most well known / widely attributed quotes, so if anyone who could help with that it would be appreciated. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:36, 18 January 2025 (UTC)