Checkmate! The Love Story of Mikhail Tal and Sally Landau

i happened to be familial with the story of their marriage. Book written bub nonprofessional writer, adn is focusing on wife's perspective only. I was expecting to learn way more about Michael Tal, whose successes i used to follow. I am not sure that i would recommend this book, unless somebody is looking for yellowish information.

Mikhail Tal is one of my heroes. I deeply appreciate Tal's dynamic style and his pure love for chess. I'm also interested in understanding relationships and have extensively studied love earlier this year. Therefore, it was a real treat for me to read Sally Landau's autobiography about her relationship with Tal. Of course, I won't spoil this book too much. Still, I found the narrative gripping and appreciate Sally's diagnosis about Tal's flaws to make it easier for me to avoid repeating his mistakes. Highly recommended.

It is more about her, than him. You don't really get any 'chess' feelings, just her life.

A heartful, loving tribute to Mikhail Tal but doesn't hold back on the ugly or tough times. A perspective of Tal and Soviet times you won't find anywhere else. Also has plenty of tidbits of various tournaments and other chessplayer biography.

Great story of World Champion Chess Player and his wife

Checkmate! The Love Story of Mikhail Tal and Sally Landau is a beautiful book written about a lifelong love between two people, one of whom, Mikhail Tal, happened to win a World Chess Championship match against the man called "the patriarch of the Soviet School of Chess," Mikhail Botvinnik.The book, written by Sally Landau, is a wonderful history of a time long gone with the wind. The author brings to life a different time and the people who lived during the Soviet Communist period. The book, like a Chess game, has only three chapters, the opening by Sally, the middle by Gera, the son of Mikhail and Sally Tal, and the end, again by Sally.She begins the book by writing about herself. "I am an inconsistent and impulsive person, who first does and only then thinks about what I have done. I am an ordinary, vulnerable woman, in which a womanly nature lived and lives, found joy and finds joy, suffered and suffers, in the full sense of those words. The way I see it, selfishness and a desire for independence somehow manage to coexist inside me with love for the people surrounding me and a subconscious wish to be a woman protected by a man who lives for me - protected by him from all sorts of major and minor everyday troubles."Later she writes, "Still sharp contradictions coexisted within me: on the one hand, this immense fear of losing my personal freedom, on the other hand, this equally immense fear of solitude and a subconscious desire to have a strong man beside me with whom I wouldn't be afraid of falling off an overturned boat in the open seas, even if I didn't know how to swim. These contradictions played a significant role in my life with Misha..."She writes about her impression of what it was like being a Jew in the Soviet Union. "So it wasn't the external appearance of the Tals' apartment that struck me that evening. Rather, it was its anti-Soviet spirit that I sensed. I immediately inhaled this pleasant middle-class air. It was apparent straight away that the people living there were not "mass-produced" but very much "hand-crafted", and that relations between them did not fit into the usual framework of socialist society."Gera was a Medical Doctor and qualified to write about Tal's well known medical problems."Well, the actual start of my father's physical ailments, however banal it may sound, was the fact of his birth. Ever since then he simply collected illnesses. But the fundamental cause of course was his totally pathological, nephrotic kidney. It tortured him relentlessly. People suffering from kidney disease know that there is nothing worse in the world than pains in the kidneys. I don't understand how such people can even exist, let alone play chess. I'm sure that it wasn't my father who lost the return match to Botvinnik, but his diseased kidney.""My father treated his life like a chess game, somewhat philosophically. There's the opening, then the opening transposes into the middle game, and if no disaster strikes in the middle game you get into a dull, technical endgame, in which a person ultimately has no chances. As far as I know, father didn't gain pleasure from playing endgames - he found them boring and insipid. Force him to give up smoking, brandy, partying and female admirers - basically, the source of intense experiences in the middle game of life - and he would find himself in the endgame, when he would have nothing left to do other than passively see out the rest of his life. However, that would have been a different person just resembling Tal. And what's the difference - to die spiritually or die physically if you can no longer be Tal?"I enjoyed this wonderful book immensely. Anyone with a love of the history of the Royal Game will be greatly rewarded for spending their time reading a beautifully written love story surrounded by the "mad men" who play the game of Chess. It is a gem. Please keep in mind I have told you not all the words.I give it all the stars in the universe!

Finally available in English, this book is a charming account of a great love affair between the beautiful artiste, Sally Landau, and the most beloved chess player of all time, former world champion Mikhail Tal. One does not have to be a chessplayer to enjoy this book, although it does help to have at least a passing familiarity with the Tal's meteoric career. The "wizard of Riga" burst on to the chess scene at a time when the world of international chess was ruled by the Soviet Union, led by "the professor" Mikhail Botvinnik who retained the world championship over several decades, occasionally losing a match to a challenger but always regaining the title in the rematch he had imposed as a condition. I will never forget the excitement, back when I played chess as a junior, when Tal earned the right to challenge and then took down the champion in what many consider the greatest match in modern history (magnificently covered in Tal's own book on the subject) only to fall ill and lose his crown in a crushing rematch. He was (and remains) renowned for his sacrificial attacks which swept all before him. Commentators later protested that his play was unsound only to have computer assisted analysis reveal in many instances that he had intuitively seen the truth of his variations.Tal continued to play at a very high level for many years before succumbing to a succession of mysterious illnesses no doubt exacerbated by his hopelessly undisciplined lifestyle, which included his divorce from his beloved Sally after too many affairs with other women.But this book is not really about Tal but rather about Sally and her great love story. Recommended for all readers.

If you love chess then 100% you will love Mikhail Tal. Daring combinational style, Turbulent complications over the board, Shocking sacrifices, Ultra hyper aggressive bloodshot Tactical blow, unique style, merciless Attack ! Even Won against Kasparov on death bed !! If you read this book at the end you will cry and busted in tears for the great legend Eighth world chess champion Mikhail Tal !!The saga of Magician from Riga ! Pirate of Latvia !!

Livre intéressant qui nous éclaire un peu plus sur Tal