The Move Tal Did Not Mean to Play

Bobby Fischer vs Mikhail Tal, Bled International Tournament, round 2 1961 · Sicilian Defence, Taimanov Variation · 1-0

Mikhail Tal

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Bobby Fischer

Step through the game; it stops where a move is worth finding.

Before move one

Coach

Fischer was eighteen and had never beaten Tal. Six games, two draws, four losses. This one was decided on move six, and not by analysis: Tal played his move, walked off across the stage to wait, glanced at the demonstration board and saw a white knight somewhere it had no business being. He came back to the board and discovered he had played a different move from the one he intended. Everything after that is Fischer refusing to relax, and Tal writing it all down afterwards with a candour that no annotator watching from outside could match.

Engine plan

Watch the knight that jumps to the fifth rank on move seven. It is only playable because Black never spent a move taking the square away, and everything that follows is White cashing in that one tempo.
Read Tal's notes at moves 9 and 16. He tells you which move he wanted to play, which he thought was objectively best, and why he chose neither. That is the part of a game no diagram records.
Compare the two accounts at moves 6 and 21. Tal and Fischer remember the same game differently, and the translator sides with neither of them.
At move 23 White lets his queen be taken. Work out what he gets for her before you read the note.
The last twenty moves are queen against two rooks. Look at where the rooks go rather than at the material count.

Scoresheet

1-0