World Chess Championship 1961
| Portraits |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Mikhail Tal | Mikhail Botvinnik | |
| nation |
.svg){kind=small}
|
|
| status | Defending champion | challenger |
| Age | 24 years | 49 years |
The 1961 World Chess Championship was a rematch between the reigning world chess champion Michail Tal and his predecessor Michail Botvinnik . Botvinnik won and took back the title he had lost to Tal in the 1960 World Cup fight .
prehistory
The right to a rematch was a privilege of the reigning world champion, because a challenger had to defeat the world champion twice, while a win (and even a draw) in one match was sufficient to defend the title. This had enabled Botvinnik in 1958 to regain his title, which he had lost to Vasily Smyslow at the 1957 World Cup .
Organization and rules
The competition took place in Moscow in the hall of the Estraden Theater. The competition was scheduled for 24 games, with a tie Tal would keep his title.
course
The match started on March 15th. On May 12th, Botvinnik was the winner and became world champion for the third time. Botvinnik's clear 10: 5 victory against an often passively acting Tal is attributed, among other things, to his kidney disease, which broke out at Tal at the time of the fight.
In the 17th game, Tal reached a final with two bishops against a knight, in which he did not let Botwinnik take a position that was considered a draw fortress by Josef Kling and Bernhard Horwitz in 1851 and won so easily. The apparent fortress was proven eleven years later by John Roycroft as not to be held, but the king of the defender can go over the whole board and take a seemingly equivalent position in the opposite corner. Only computers later found victory for the stronger side. Jarl Henning Ulrichsen assumed in 2009 that Tal would have played for a profit if he had reached the critical position. If Tal had found the opportunity to lift the apparent fortress and if he had found the profit path, he could have brought about a change in the endgame theory as early as 1961 .
World Chess Championship 1961 1 2 3 4th 5 6th 7th 8th 9 10 11 12 13 14th 15th 16 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st Victories Points valley 0 1 0 ½ ½ ½ 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 ½ 0 ½ 1 0 1 ½ 0 5 8th Botvinnik 1 0 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 ½ 1 ½ 0 1 0 ½ 1 10 13
consequences
After the fight, FIDE abolished the 1956 right of revenge. At the following World Cup in 1963 , Botvinnik finally lost his world title to Tigran Petrosyan .
As a result, Tal was unable to qualify for a world championship fight. In qualifying for the 1966 World Cup , he only failed in the final against Boris Spasski .
literature
- Raymund Stolze : Contested Crown - The duels of the world chess champions from Steinitz to Kasparow . Sportverlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-328-00526-9 .
- Mikhail Botvinnik: "Revenge competition for the World Chess Championship Botvinnik - Moscow Valley 1961". Edition Olms 2005, ISBN 3-283-00462-5 .
Web links
- Tournament report and games at chessgames.com. Retrieved November 6, 2012 .