Matching minds with a grandmaster. The Monitor's sports editor and 29 other brave souls recently went eyeball to eyeball with a legend of the chess world in a simultaneous competition. There were some surprises...

CHESS still means Bobby Fischer to most people; some are getting to know world champion Gary Kasparov, too; but to aficionados the name that conjures up the most vivid images of excitement and magic at the board continues to be that of Mikhail Tal. So when I heard that the legendary attacking genius from Latvia was making his first visit to America, and giving a simultaneous exhibition in my own area, I quickly signed up to play.

Not that I harbored any serious illusions about beating one of the game's all-time superstars - the man who in 1960 became the youngest player up to that time to win the world title, and who is still one of the top grandmasters. And any thoughts that Tal might be over the hill at this stage of his career had just been dispelled by his win in the $50,000 World Blitz Championship ahead of Kasparov and former world titleholder Anatoly Karpov.

It would be fun to try, though; perhaps to at least give him a run for his money. Somewhere inside me a little voice kept saying things like, ``On a given day...,'' and, ``Anybody can make a mistake when he's playing so many people at the same time!''

THE STRATEGY

Preparing for the contest was easy enough, since I have several books of Tal's games in my library. After burning the midnight oil for a few nights, I figured I was pretty well versed in his style, and in the ways he was most likely to meet my pet variation of the Sicilian Defense.

Finally, the big night arrived. I and 29 other intrepid souls, each having paid $50 for the privilege, sat down at rows of tables while a hundred or so spectators jammed into the Framingham Chess Club to hear Tal give a lecture and then watch him demolish player after player.

The lecture was most interesting, as Tal related anecdotes from his career, then answered questions on just about every chess subject imaginable.

Did he have a particular favorite among his games? ``I hope I haven't played it yet,'' he replied.

But among those he has played, does any one stand out as the most memorable? ``Perhaps the final game of the first match with [Mikhail] Botvinnik,'' he said, recalling the meteoric rise that carried him all the way to victory in the 1960 title match when he was only 24 years old.

``Or perhaps the final game of the second match,'' he added with a rueful smile, referring to the rematch in which Botvinnik regained the crown a year later.

THE OPPONENT

There have been many other big moments, most of them happy, during Tal's long and illustrious career. He has won six Soviet championships, a record matched only by Botvinnik, and nearly 50 international tournaments. And his record as the youngest-ever world champ stood until two years ago, when Kasparov broke it at age 22.

But more important even than all this success was the way he achieved it. For at a time when chess seemed to be growing too scientific, Tal's risk-taking, spectacular play was a throwback to the game's earlier romantic era.

In his young heyday of the 1950s and '60s, Tal repeatedly stunned the chess world with his daring attacks, frequently sacrificing pieces in unclear positions and then outplaying his opponents in the ensuing complications. This made him a hero to the public, which was tired of the dull, cautious play of most grandmasters. Sometimes in post-game analyses, though, his sacrifices were found to be unsound, succeeding only because the bedazzled opponent had failed to find the correct defense. Some critics called him lucky, but clearly it happened too often to attribute his success to chance. Or, as one chess writer of the time put it, ``The plural of luck is skill.''

Perhaps as good an indication as any of that skill is Tal's plus score of 4 wins, 2 losses, and 5 draws against Fischer - one of the best records any player was able to achieve in combat with the enigmatic American grandmaster. Tal expressed sadness that Fischer dropped out of the game after winning the world championship from Boris Spassky in 1972.

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