Performing True Sacrifice

Tactics can be quite common in chess, but sacrifices are usually more flashy and amazing. Of course, they are more harder to do. For tactics, you know that after a few moves, you win back more material than you lost. For a sacrifice, you don't know how many moves it will take to win back the material. Often, sacrifices expose their king to start an attack. Here is an example from the Mikhail Tal:

Material can be sacrificed to start winning attacks, but can be hard to do, since you need to take a risk. But with big risk comes big reward, so to be a great chess player you must learn to take risks. Here is a question from the Chess Personality Test:

Sacrificing on g5 and retreating to g3 are both good options, and many players prefer both options. Taking on g5 exposes the king and leads to a strong attack that may soon end the game, but if Black is able to defend, you will potentially go into a losing endgame. So both moves are reasonable. This is often the case of most sacrifices. But sometimes a sacrifice comes from a losing position, so you don't really have much to lose. Such as the following position.

Can you find Ding Liren's amazing sacrifice?

If you found it, awesome! The sacrifice won the game:

That ends the blog. Often there are risk and reward positions in chess, and playing it safe may cause you to miss a winning opportunity.