Botvinnik-Tal, World Chess Championship, Moscow 1960, game 6
The "Wizard of Riga", as Mikhail Tal was nicknamed, amazed everyone with his creativity and unpredictability on the chess board. Many of his successful sacrifices were analysed for decades after the games were played and often the verdict was that Tal's opponents could have refuted the daring sacrifices. But home analysis and independent play over the board under time pressure are completely different things, which Mikhail Tal proved again and again.
In the sixth game of the World Championship match against Mikhail Botvinnik in 1960, Tal surprised the reigning World Champion with a sacrifice out of the blue. Suddenly Black's initiative on the queenside became much more dangerous thanks to the newly created motifs against the white king on the opposite side of the board. As subsequently proved, in the arising complications White could have achieved advantage, but he needed to calculate precisely and compare lots of variations in a sharp position. No wonder that even the highly experienced Botvinnik got confused, went wrong and lost.
This victory with the black pieces was an important step for the overall victory in the match and helped the young Tal to become World Champion at the age of 23. Tal's record of the youngest ever World Champion was broken only quarter of a century later by 22-year-old Garry Kasparov.