At the Movies: Korchnoi, Tal, and Other Chess Superstars

Plus and related: Improving on Alatortsev-Kholmov

If you’re familiar with Viktor Korchnoi and Mikhail Tal, then you’re in for a treat. (If you don’t know who they are, then you’re in for a different sort of treat as you discover them for the first time. But then if you don’t know who they were, you’re probably not reading this unless you’re very young.) Tal was the World Champion for just a year, from 1960-1961, but he is a legend even among top players and even other champions for his incredibly creative and tactical style. While his seemingly innumerable health problems made it difficult for him to sustain his peak, he was at or near the top (on and off) for roughly three decades. Korchnoi was never the world champion, so he played in two or three championship matches (depending on whether one counts the 1974 Candidates final as a de facto title match), twice losing by a single point. His first Candidates event was in 1962 and his last in 1991, and he was still well over 2600 into his 70s.

Both were legends of the game, and notable as personalities, too. And, getting to the point of this post, both participated in a chess movie; not a documentary or a docudrama or some other presentation pretending to be historical. A real movie that came out in 1973 called Grossmeister. Korchnoi plays the trainer of the titular subject, while Tal shows up essentially playing himself, commentating on the action for fans in front of a demo board. Lots of other well-known elite players show up, both in clips from a real event and others who are participating in the movie per se (e.g. Mark Taimanov, and what seems to be Boris Spassky making moves on the giant wall board for the public).

It’s fun to see these greats from the Soviet era in film, and the game that’s at the heart of the action is very interesting as well. The position at the start is taken from a 1948 game between Vladimir Alatortsev, a Russian IM who later received an honorary GM title, and Ratmir Kholmov, a Russian GM who was one of the world’s best through the 1960s despite never getting far in the world championship cycle. The game finished in a draw, but Kholmov missed a beautiful win that’s eventually found by the lead character in the film.

The clips (if anyone can find the whole film online, please share the link in the comments) are below, and here is the actual game, with my attempt to reconstruct the analysis and moves from the movie included in the notes. (By the way, these videos are on the YouTube channel for “Mister Chess”, which includes lots of other interesting material. I’ll mention two for their pure entertainment value: first, Viktor Korchnoi talking trash about his great rival Anatoly Karpov; second, Yasser Seirawan looking like the first coming of Borat. I like—it’s nice!)