Chess Strategy

I was reading through John Watson’s magnificent book “Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy”” and one of his remarks on opposite-colored bishops tackled my curiosity: “(Mikhail) Tal had a few classic victories in opposite-coloured bishop endings which raised eyebrows”…If John mentions it, then there should be more than one or two examples in Tal’s practice. I wanted to take a look at them and eventually found one in an old magazine.

The diagram shows white to make his 55th move. This game is not included in the book “The Life and Games of Mihail Tal”, but Viktor Korchnoi mentions in his “Chess Is My Life - Autobiography and Games” that Soviet team expected a draw after analyzing the adjournment (around 40th move) - Tal probably improved the position upon resumption.

At the first sight, the ending appears to be drawish. Bc5 is protecting queenside pawns and black king is close to defend weak h6. But looking deeper, we can see that black is horribly weak over the light squares. White’s better mobility and space advantage will allow him to push black king into the corner. And then, since black bishop is limited by its own pawns, zugzwang decides the outcome. A natural start is…

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