Mikhail Tal

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…