How to Sacrifice in Chess
By: Preshit Soni
Tags: Sacrifice, Chess, Vision, Attacks, Games

Chess is a versatile game, with too many lines and variations and theoretical positions. One of the most intriguing aspects of chess are sacrifices, which victimize the opponent if accepted. A sacrifice is considered most profound when it cannot be refused, and if the end is not clear to foresee.

These type of sacrifices are classified as intuitive and positional sacrifices, intuitive sacrifices are purely dependent on intuition while positional sacrifices are the most aesthetic forms of modern sacrifices where the end is almost impossible to foresee and thus pure judgement, understanding and intuition are needed. For example, you are in a position where you are a pawn up, and you have a queen and rook attacked, the most prior decision would be to save the queen and sacrifice the rook which would require sheer boldness. thus if you can get a piece for the rook then you can get into a decent position.

Another example of a positional sacrifice would be to sacrifice a piece of very little value such as a pawn, for development and attack, one such example of this is a gambit, in the opening where two or more pawns are sacrificed, for development. Consider the Sicilian Defense, for example, where the thematic exchange sacrifice is used. A famous demonstration of this is a game between Kasparov and Movesian which started with 1e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3d4 cxd4 4Nxd4 Nc3 5 a6 Be3 6 e6 f3 7 b5 Qd2 8 Nbd7 0–0 9Bb7 g4 10 Nb6 Qf2!? 11Nfd7! Kb1 12 Rfc8 Bd3 and now came the shocker 13 Rxc3! I was talking about these kind of moves where the position remains complex and black has no means of an attack. Second of all, black hasn’t even completed his development but this sacrifice is still effective as black had calculated all this perfectly, this is known as a exchange sacrifice where black sacrifices the rook for the knight, black followed this up with Qc7 and Na4 ganging up on the weak c pawn. Black also played d5 , castled and quickly brought his pieces into play, and destroyed white. And in the end created a beautiful checkmate pattern.

But the question arises to how should you sacrifice in a certain position?

Consider this example.

In this position, black has the knight on d4 attacked, surprisingly enough , there is no way the knight could go, you could defend it with a move like Qb6 and continue the position, but there is a shocking surprise in store for white,11g6!! This is the move! It seems as if black just blundered a pawn, but in hindsight this position is equal! 12 Bxd4 Qxd4 13 Qa5+! Qd2 13 Qc3?? then b4 and game over 14 Qxd2+ Kxd2 and Bh6+ and black has the bishop pair and this position is better for black, all black has to do is develop his pieces and gain the advantage!

Another type is intuitive when you don’t know the correct follow-up in the position, one famous game was between Abe Yanofsky and Alberto Dulanto which continued with 21 Rg8 22 Rxe6+! kxe6 23 Re1+ kd6 24 Qf6+ kc5 25 Re5+ kc4 26 b3+! kd3 27 Qd6+ kc2 and white won after 28 Re2 + for the game, check this link, https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1150076

Kasparov was a great sacrificer in all phases. A brilliant player, he sacrificed in endgame as well. One game was with Artur Yusupov, where Kasparov just put the knight into a position where it can simply be captured! He won that game after brutally hunting down Yusupov’s king!

Sacrificing is the real test for victory and mastery. If you don’t sacrifice then you may lose the initiative, it is the most appealing feature of combative attacks!

Obviously, sacrificing is harder than it looks but it is the real test, an avalanche sliding through the mountains to bury your opponent’s pieces. If you have a good board vision, then sacrificing is just a child’s play for you! Get to work! And good luck in your sacrificial journey!