# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/mikhail-tal
# Generated: 2026-09-07T19:13:39.345Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/mikhail-tal"
name: "Mikhail Tal"
slug: "mikhail-tal"
description: "The eighth World Chess Champion attacked the board like a poet writing in fire — improvising, daring, impossible to predict. \"The Magician from Riga\" turned every game into something unrepeatable, and the anthologies bear it out: more of his brilliancies are preserved than any other player's."
tagline: "Soviet-Latvian chess player (1936-1992)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Mikhail_Tal_1982.jpg"
gender: "male"
category:
  name: "Writers"
  slug: "writers"
profileType:
  name: "Writer / Author"
  slug: "writer"
birthDate: "1936-11-09"
deathDate: "1992-06-27"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           61.04
  momentum:             0
  historical:           25.23336
  currentAttention:     0
  sourceConfidence:     65
  profileCompleteness:  65
  trendDirection:       "STABLE"
ranks:
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  country:  null
  category: null
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    slug: "writer-author"
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    slug: "journalism"
  - name: "20th Century"
    slug: "20th-century"
platforms:
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    handle:    "nm1468561"
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    title: "Таль Михаил Нехемьевич"
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    title: "میخائیل تال"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Mihail Tal"
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Mikhail Tal was born 9 November 1936 in Soviet Latvia and became a grandmaster whose combinatorial style defied preparation — he didn't calculate so much as conjure. He won the World Championship in 1960 at twenty-three, the youngest holder of the title at the time, and went on to compile a 95-game unbeaten streak between October 1973 and October 1974, a record that stood for decades. Vladislav Zubok said every game was "as inimitable and invaluable as a poem," and the assessment stuck: both The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games and Modern Chess Brilliancies feature more of his work than anyone else's. Beyond the board he wrote extensively about the game, admired for clarity and insight. He died 28 June 1992 in Moscow; a memorial tournament ran in his name for years afterward.