I fooled my opponent, but was it accurate?

thanks, pskogli!  i was still blinded by my greed in that game, it was difficult to see alternatives.

after Nxe5!, black's plans would be thwarted and rather than Bxg2, would saving pieces be in order?  (i'm really new to chess... i don't know what should be a priority.)

• moving the rook to safety
• recapturing the knight with Bxe5
  

Was it the right thing to do?  Yes it was: you crushed him as a consequence of it.

Pskogli gives a better line for white; sure it is better but I disagree with the "?" and "!" on moves 15 black and 16 white.  After white plays 16. Nxe5 black shouldn't respond with 16. Bxg2 but instead play 16. dxe5 because after 17. Bxe8 black plays Qxd2+, 18. Bxd2 and then black plays 18. Rxe8. (see below)

So white ends up the exchange but black has two additional pawns for the hastle and two pretty nice Bishops.  He can also eye up the nice d4 square for his Knight at some point; ruining any opportunity for white to use his Rooks as a battery up the d-file.  I would rather have black here for the simple reason that I think white will be defending for the rest of the game and if he does it well then he might draw, if he doesn't do it well then he will almost certainly lose whereas black doesn't have to be perfect to get a lot out of this one.

Hope this helps.

A

If you have a forced sacrifice that gives you a won position, by

1. a check mate

2. taking back the material with a superior position.

You should of course make the sacrifice.

When you have to defend you should make the move that gives the best resistance.

In your game, the best move (after the bad sacrifice) would be to recapture the knight, if you move the rook you give up a whole knight! That's 3 pawns!

When you give up a rook for a bishop, you only lose 2 pawns.

And in many positions a bishop could be worht the whole rook.

It wasn't a bad sacrafise, it still works even if there were better moves.  A bad sacrafice would be one that turned a game into a 'lost' game, this one didn't do that, in fact it was a pretty forcing move as it meant white had to play very accurately just to draw close to level.

 Sorry, but I would prefer the white position, a sacrifice isn't good just because your opponent plays bad.

The point I am making is that it didn't matter what your opponent did you were still going to end up in a better position than him; even if he played very well.  If you prefer the white position then you need to get out your analysis board!   You will realise very quickly that the Bishop with the two additional pawns will be impossible to break-down by the Rook if played correctly.

Blacks position would be better witouth the sacrifice, simply dxe is a better move.

You could be right in your statment, that black should still win with the "bad" sacrifice, but to really find the answer one need to ask the computer for advice. (not just 1-2 minutes of analyze, but some hours)

Well dxe5 is better but there are more than one ways to skin a cat.

On the point of computers; they are not always the best things to look over your games, especially for newer players. A computer will tell you the strongest moves but it won't tell you why and sometimes they are only the strongest moves because of a bizarre deep line that the computer has seen but 99.99% of humans would never see.  There is no real point in knowing the best move if you don't know why it's the best move.

I dont ask Rybka for help annymore, I prefer to find it my self. I agree with you, no point beeing told the best moves without the right plan.

AMcHarg, thank you for making the illustration that starts with the line of dxe5, i had been curious about that after thinking about white knight captures black knight killing my plan.  i had been thinking of the shorter term goal of using the attacked bishop to make the recapture, but making the capture with the d-pawn is much more forcing.  and though black loses a rook, having two active bishops is appealing.

and pskogli, the two points on sacrifice i'll try to remember.  occassionally, i'll make a sacrifice hoping that some kind of karmic luck will give me initiative or gain in material/position... but that is a little overly romantic and only with luck it's been able to work for me in the past.

i haven't yet looked at the computer analysis (provided on this site), but i'm really looking forward to it after this discussion.

i've just looked at the computer analysis done by the chess.com computers, and -if you're interested... if 16. Nxe5 (white knight captures black knight, not white bishop captures black rook at e8 in the game) then 16. ... Bxe5 with a predicted "moderate advantage for black."

it seems that the gamble i took and the sacrifice of the rook left black with a decisive advantage that looks funny to me as black would have ended up with one rook + two knights (but a complete set of pawns) vs white's two rooks and one knight.

looks like AMcHarg was on the money!  didn't need a computer to tell you that, though.

interesting lesson for me!  thanks, again!