World Chess Championship 1960


The 1960 World Chess Championship was played between Mikhail Botvinnik and Mikhail Tal in Moscow from March 15 to May 7, 1960. Botvinnik was the reigning champion, after winning the World Chess Championship 1958, while Tal qualified by winning the Candidates tournamant. Tal won by a margin of 4 points.

1958 Interzonal tournament

An interzonal chess tournament was held in Portorož, SR Slovenia, SFR Yugoslavia in August and September 1958. The top six finishers qualified for the Candidates tournament.

1959 Candidates tournament

The 1959 Candidates Tournament was held in Yugoslavia in Bled, Zagreb, and Belgrade. The top two players from the previous tournament, Smyslov and Keres, were seeded directly into the tournament and joined by the top six from the interzonal. Mikhail Tal won, becoming the challenger in the 1960 championship match.
The tournament was notable in that the two top finishers, Tal and Keres, scored heavily against the bottom of the field. If only scores between the top 4 are taken into account, the results of the top 4 are quite similar. But Tal and Keres scored heavily against the bottom 4, with Tal scoring an incredible 14½/16, including winning all 4 of his games against Fischer.
Future World Champion Bobby Fischer was 16 years old at the time. He was the youngest Candidate in history until Magnus Carlsen qualified for the 2007 Candidates under a different system.

1960 Championship match

The best of 24 game match was held in Moscow. In the event of a 12–12 tie, Botvinnik, the title holder, would retain the Championship.
Due to Tal's less impressive results against the very top players, including his 3 losses to Keres in the Candidates, Botvinnik was the favourite. However Tal won the match decisively, by a margin of 4 points.

Highlights

Game 6 is particularly famous, thanks to a speculative knight sacrifice by Tal on move 21. The audience became so excited that the game was moved to a back room due to the noise.