E2: The Magician

“You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.”  - Mikhail Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.  This episode it's Tal vs. Botvinnik, Moscow (1960).  Study the game here before you listen: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1032537

Resources:

• Article: Tal’s Career
  
  
• Book: The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal
  
  
• Book: Attack with Tal
  
  
• Training: King’s Indian Defence: https://www.chess.com/openings/Kings-Indian-Defense
  
  

Tips for New Listeners:

Study the game first, then listen to the audio and see how well you can visualize the moves.  If you find the exercise too difficult, try looking at the board every two moves, and as your confidence grows, every three moves, then every four, and so on.  Over time, your board vision will grow.

https://www.chess.com/openings/Kings-Indian-Defense

Great concept

This was the first audible chess podcast I have listened to. I’ll give it a solid B with room for improvement.

This is a great concept. I like the idea of introducing a historical figure, and then doing chest visualization on one of their games. Reading through an entire game is incredibly helpful in terms of developing visualization skills. It’s incredibly difficult but worth the effort if you try.

The readthrough had two errors. The first on move 33 when black’s move is listed as pawn f6 whereas the actual move is Bf6.The second error is a few moves later on a quiz about legal king moves when the author instead refers to legal Knight moves.

Having said that, I really like the notion of interspersing the game moves with position quizzes.

It would be interesting to add a bit more background on the game and perhaps some game analysis to make the podcast more valuable.

Kudos on a great concept. I will definitely listen to more of these podcasts.

Great episode!

I love it! Pls make more! This is a great podcast! Mikhail Tal’s quote was kinda creepy, but cool.

it's text to speech chess notation

was really hoping for analysis, but the majority of the "podcast" is just a computer reading the moves.