Author: Laurence Chen
Date: 00:06:54 12/15/98
From the replies to the posting I read so far about this trick subject, it seems that the majority of chessplayer think that real sacrifices are unsound and it should not be played, and that because of this the chess engine does not play it. Well, let me tell you that NOT ALL REAL SACRIFICES ARE UNSOUND, some may be unsound, and I said before in my previous post that you will find lots of games in GM games with real sacrifices, and not in the master games. Why is that so? I'll try to explain if you will bare with me. Real(TRUE) sacrifices are part of the chess heritage, without them chess would be too easy of a game to play. I can hear someone say that I must be crazy, not so, if you study the chess literature, it is filled with examples of GM games doing true sacrifices in their games, especially in the past, in the pre-Morphy times. Surely, you may point out that in those days chess technique was not as sophisticated as it is in our modern times. Not true, the so called modern chess technique was not born in a vacuum, but through a THOROUGH study of all the games in the past. Steinitz did not develop his theory from his own games, he study the games of his contemporay Paul Morphy, it was from Morphy games which Steinitz were able to formulate his theories and improve on chess defense technique. The so called Soviet School, or the Russian school did the same, their master studied the games of the past generations, and improved upon their teachings. And remember that when chess programmers teach their engine chess the programmers also study the chess literature, and they use chess games and positions from GM games, and especially the analysis by GM. Why? Because they need to have basis to check the analysis of their engine, how else would they know if they are in the right track, if the engine is under or over evaluating the position. GM are humans and of course sometimes they will make mistakes in their analysis, that is why they publish their analysis in magazines or newspaper so that their fellows GM can go over their analysis and correct the mistakes. Teaching a chess engine to perform a true chess sacrifice is not an easy task, GM do them because they have a feel for the position, and feel that they are in the right track, they don't necessary calculate every variation, but check analysis to make sure that they will be able to reach a certain position where they know they be able to solve the problem from that point onwards. To teach this to a chess engine is a very difficult task, something which cannot be quantified. Why do I say that without real or true sacrifices chess would be easy? The answer is very simple, if you ever played poker you probably know the answer, if not, I'll try to explain. Let me use the game of poker to explain this, the best poker players know when to bluff and sometimes they have a feel for the game and are able to get away and win large pots with busted hands. How come? Okay, if bluffing were not allowed in poker games, the game would be very easy, and I bet you it would not draw a large audience and the game would die very quickly. Why? Simple, if bluffing were not allowed in the game, you would always know what kind of hand your opponent held. The would be no second guessing, it would be very straight forward, either you have your opponent hand beat or not, and that makes calling or raising very easy. How can one win under such conditions? Now let us introduce the bluffing into the game. Now you got a problem, you have a good hand, but you are not sure that your hand is strong enough to beat your opponent. He may have a busted hand, he may have you beat. You are now facing a dilemma very similar to the choice of two doors, the lady or the tiger. Make the right decision you win a large pot, make the wrong one it cost you a lot of chips. Because it is not easy to figure out with certainty what hand your opponent holds, it makes poker a tough game to play and win consistently. Now let us look at the third case, you got an opponent which always bluff on the poker game, well the solution to that problem is to always call your opponent's bluff, because in the long run you will win the majority of the pots. So how does all of this analysis translates to chess you may ask? If you understood my example above, it should be fairly obvious. Put this way, you sit down to play a chess game with an opponent who never do real sacrifices, only pseudo-sacrifices. Well when your opponent plays that sacrifice against you, you pretty much got an idea what is going to happen to your game, you are in a very hot waters right now, and your only hope is to find a flaw or an intermediate move which your opponent may have overlooked in his analysis. So your choices of candidates moves are limited, and you don't have to spend much time to search for hidden resources because everything is pretty much forced. So one way to avoid defeat is to see far ahead and prevent your opponent from playing a pseudo-sacrifice, and that my friend would make chess a very easy and definitively a BORING game. It would be like playing checkers. Now let us look at the opposite case, you sit down and plays with an opponent who always make sacrifices, not all his sacrifices are sound, well how would you play against such opponent. Very easy, always accept his sacrifices, and for sure you will win many games against this type of opponent. I speak from experience, in the past I used to play against this chessplayer who sacrificed pieces like no tomorrow, and he liked to play gambits, in the beginning I lost to him, however, once I understood that most of his sacrifices were unsound, that psychological veil of fear that my opponent would make a sacrifice on me disappeared completely, I accepted all sacrifices from my opponent, and I even would set up hidden traps to welcome his sacrifices which he would of course fall for it. It got to the point that he refused to play with me because he no longer could beat me nor win a single game against me, he called me a tough nut to crack. Okay, with these two extreme cases out of the way, let us look at the optimum case, your opponent sometimes perform real sacrifices and most of time his sacrifices are pseudo sacrifices. I find this type of player the most difficult one to defeat, why, the same reason I explained about the bluffing in a poker game. You don't know for sure if your opponent's sacrifice is sound or unsound. And because of that you are forced to check every possible candidate move and try really hard to find a way to refute the sacrifice, you don't know if you can accept the Greek gift. Hence to play a real sacrifice is part of the chess heritage which should not be totally ignored, and because the chess engines don't play them DOES NOT MAKE REAL SACRIFIECES UNSOUND. GM plays them because of the psychological effect which these type of sacrifices have on their opponents, it brings a change of the position abruptly, and all the sudden one is faced with a set of new problems to be solved and that cannot be easily solved when the clock is ticking away...!!! If you want to learn more about real (true) sacrifices I recommend reading The Modern Chess Sacrifice book by Leonid Shamkovich, and the classic book by Rudolf Spielmann, The Art of Sacrifice in Chess. With this last thought I leave you with another position which my chess engines (Fritz 5.16, Junior 5, CM 6000, Hiarcs6) had difficult in find the best move, it was easy for GM Smyslov. This position were taken from the book mentioned above. r4r2/pp1q2bk/2n1nppp/2p5/3pP1P1/P2P1NNQ/1PPB3P/1R3R1K w - - 0 24 The best move is 24. Nf5! GM Smyslov commenting about this game in his book, "Selected Games", write about 24. Nf5: "A typical piece sacrifice in analogous position. In this case, however, its peculiarity is that White, rather than strive for an immediate recovery of the sacrificed material, seeks an attack by systematically stepping up pressure on the Black position. CONCRETE VARIATIONS are of little help-rather an overall appraisal of the position settles the matter." (Note: the bold letters are mine). The idea behind such sacrifice is to open up the g-file and weakening the enemy kingside where the King resides. It is purely a positional sacrifice. The game was played by Smyslov vs. Kotov, Moscow 1943, for those of you who might be interested to get the moves for the rest of the game. A game worthy of studying. I'd be interested to know if any engines are able to find the best move and/or refute White's sacrifice. I use real sacrifice in my chess arsenal, and it has helped me a lot to score some nice wins and to save very difficult positions. I don't claim to be an expert in this subject. I am not trying to advocate that everyone should start playing real sacrifices, it is your choice to learn and use it properly.
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