Tiger tiger

Petrosian Move by Move is a new book published by Everyman Chess written by the Swedish international master Thomas Engqvist. The book consists of 60 closely annotated games, all wins, by Tigran Petrosian, world champion from 1963 to 1969 and an inspiration for the recent successes of the Armenian team, who have won the Olympiad gold medal on three occasions (2006, 2008 and 2012). Petrosian has a reputation for caution, and his victories were often described as pragmatic or even defensive. Engqvist takes a completely different view, depicting Petrosian as an artist of the chessboard, possessed of a quite idiosyncratic style. When he took risks they were strategic, rather than the type of overly sacrificial attack which at times bedevilled the games of Mikhail Tal, world champion from 1960 to 1961.
 
Engqvist’s notes to this game demonstrate that when Petrosian did go in for a sacrificial attack, he had worked it all out from the start with great precision, rather than relying on intuition or the kind of supercharged guesswork which was sometimes seen in the games of Tal or Spassky.