Sacrifice!

If you could perfect the sacrifice, you could win almost every time. Unfortunately, the sacrifice is one of the hardest parts of chess to learn.

         "I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think" - Socrates

This quote well describes the learning procedure of the sacrifice. I cannot teach you the definite do's and don'ts of sacks; I can only make you watch out for them. ALWAYS look to see if you can win by a sacrifice, and one time, it will work. Even the highest grandmasters will overlook a sacrifice, as they're very hard to spot. One great chess master that was famous for sacrificing was Mikhail Tal. Sacrificing in the opening is generally not good. Only one opening has a so-so sacrifice in the opening. This opening is called the fried liver attack.

It is mainly used for flagging your opponent. One interesting thing about the fried liver attack is that it has an early checkmate that white can perform on black if black plays poorly. I have not included this premature opening trap because playing chess for traps does not improve your game. Finally, to finish this up, I have included a game I played in which I performed a sacrifice:

My sacrifice was just plain silly. I played it for fun!