Always Play Rf6!

GM Ben Finegold is well known for his chess rules to live by, most famously, "never play f6." A black pawn almost never belongs on f6. It's dangerous for the black king and makes it hard to move other pieces on the kingside.

For all of the same reasons why placing a pawn on f6 is bad for Black, hampering development and weakening the king, there's a piece that's often perfect on f6: a white rook!

Why would you sacrifice a rook in front of the opposing king? Most of the time, the f6 sacrifice doesn't even capture anything. The main point is to prevent the opponent from advancing the f-pawn, and possibly even to sacrifice the rook again elsewhere in the next few moves. Check out Bobby Fischer's classic f6 sacrifice from one of his 60 Memorable Games.

Fischer's Rf6 led to a quick win of material, but sometimes the rook can just live on f6 for a while. If Black can't safely capture it right away, it can stay a thorn in your opponent's side for many moves. In the following game, Black needed to advance the f-pawn to prevent White's kingside attack. Once a rook reached f6, Black was doomed, even if the execution took many moves. Please excuse the excessive use of brilliant move evaluations in the annotations. They're all awarded by Game Review.

This type of sacrifice isn't specific to any opening, color, or even side of the board. Check out journalist and author Peter Doggers' repeated use of the mirrored sacrifice to win one of the best games of his career. While we've seen White sacrifice the rook on f6. Black sacrifices the rook on c3. Here's the game with Doggers' own annotations.

And below you can watch Doggers' recollections of the game!

Let's conclude with a puzzle. Can you find the right way to use Rf6?

Have you played a sacrifice like this in your own games? Let us know in the comments!