Understanding the Sacrifice: Sacrifice Your Way to Success - download book

   There are numerous 'puzzle' books available that feature spectacular combinations involving one sacrifice after another, the victim obligingly accepting an army of pieces on the way to finding his king being caught in the heart of enemy territory. These examples are indeed entertaining and can be quite instructive, but they also take us a step further from an area of the game about which many players are already rather apprehensive positional chess. In fact if weighing up the implications of isolated or doubled pawns (or even more complex weak squares) can be intimidating, then the subject of the positional sacrifice might seem alien to some players.

   In order to maximise our chances it is important to study the positional aspects of the game to such an extent that we are able to develop an internal alarm system designed to alert us to weak squares, pawns and structures as soon as they are created. In this way we are open to (our own) sacrificial suggestions when the opportunity arises, material investment sometimes being the only way forward.

   Many players are handicapped by a lack of confidence in their ability to accurately assess the positional characteristics of a sacrificial variation, and/or (equally important) their ability to conduct such situations properly if and when they happen. The result is, of course, countless missed opportunities.

   This book is aimed at helping those players who rarely contemplate a positional sacrifice, with sixty examples providing a reasonably detailed, practical guide to the pros and cons of investing material for positional gain.


Author: Dunnington Angus
Title: "Understanding the Sacrifice"
Released: 2002
Format: djvu
Quality: good
Number of pages: 139
Size: 3 Mb