Articles

Double exchange sacrifice stories

arna
| 14 | Amazing Games

In modern chess it's now wellknown that being an exchange up or down is not that much! Topalov's tendency to sacrifice a rook for a bishop some years ago contributed to that, among other things. Of course you need something in compensations, it could be a pawn, activity, attack, a passed pawn, and so on. But what about sacrificing 2 exchanges !?

The 5th game of the Gelfand - Leko rapid match played 2 weeks ago was a fantastic battle featuring 2 Rooks against Bishop+Knight+pawn+activity. Here is this great game, to which I added some comments and variations to the already good job of match commentators Berkes and Meszaros.


This made me think of another game with a double exchange sacrifice: former Women World Champion Zhu Chen against chess legend Mark Taimanov in 1997. I commented this one too.


I'm pretty sure you were not afraid to sacrifice the exchange. Now maybe you won't be afraid to sacrifice 2 exchanges either Wink

Let me know if other games with this pattern come in your mind!

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