Chess progress and understanding.

 "There are sound sacrifices and then there are mine" Tal

Seriously, I would expect a player of your caliber to know that some are speculative, even at the master level

If compensation is clear and adequate (now, what do those terms mean, exactly), then the speculative component of a 'sacrifice' is minimal or not present. There must be many sacrifices where either or both of those characteristics are not present or one is unsure whether they are present. In those cases, certainly the speculative component rises in measure, all the way until we reach the level of 'unsound.'

 eh?

Such are the mysteries of chess, without which, none of us would continue playing.

I don't recall who is credited with the quote, but "if I win, it was a sacrifice; if I lose, it was a blunder"

Dsarkar: I agree with the spirit of the message, however, if every  sacrifice was truly precision calculated, then every game would be drawn. The difference is how deep the calculations go.

Certainly, beginners only look 1 to 2 moves out, and even then miss a lot of opportunities because they're only looking at 2 or 3 pieces. Masters look several moves out. Alekhine claimed to not make a move until he could see a line of mate, not something many people can do. Considering his record, I believe it.

Kupov: Personally, I believe that how 'good' you are at chess is a relative idea. To truly understand the game would be a multi-life long journey. Honestly, there is no GM alive that truly understands every opening in all variations.

So, more to the point, you should be asking yourself to clarify the question. Rather than asking "do I understand chess", ask yourself, "what aspect of the game do I need to work on most".

This will change as you progress, but may include tactics, strategy, opening repertoire, opening theory, transitions from between stages of a game, endgame theory, etc. etc. etc.

Essentially, just as in the actual game, if you have a clear goal it is much easier to achieve than if you're wandering aimlessly.

Oh, one more thing; when higher rated players are saying to "read books, practice", what they mean to say is "take the time to sit down and study out the examples given in the books, starting only with the inital drawing/diagram, explore every possible/plausible move sequence, write down your sequences along with questions you have along the way, and ONLY THEN look at the authors narrative of moves with annotations". Two things will happen:

1) You will begin to see your thought process moulded by the author's influence.

2) You will be able to look back at a concrete comparison of how you once analyzed a given situation to how you currently analyze it.

Together, you will know if/that you have improved, and in which aspects of the game.

Sounds like a lot of work, which it is, and also why there are so many of us average-joe's and so few of the top GM's....

 Tal is one of the few exceptions... He had strong "chess intuition" by which he could "sense" rather than precisely calculate whether a sac is sound or not. Also the reason he sometimes lost. There are very few like him.

I have seen games of Capa, Lasker and Morphy - all sacs are calculated precisely upto 18-20 moves - no chance of ever going wrong!!

I don't think you can realistically say that no master but Tal has ever made a speculative sacrifice.

Well, from the games I have studied, I have come to that conclusion! Exceptions are lines which yield advantages for quite a number of moves... but even then I suspect the masters have calculated till the end - that I cannot do it does not automatically conclude that they have not done it... specifically Andersen's sacs I found calculated with utmost precision...

Pawn gambits are of course exceptions... I am talking about piece-sacs

 A lot of chess "rules" oppose each other.  There are always exceptions to the rules.  And to put it another way-the more I learn the more I realize how much more I need to learn and how little I actually know. 

 Ok, I think I understand that you are referring to the 'world champions', not simply a 'master' title. With that, I agree with you.

How many world champions have there been? Less than 20 right? Even if you include Morphy. 

So if Tal was the only one to ever make a speculative sacrifice (which I doubt) then 5% of all the world champions often made speculative sacrifices.

And below World Champion level I'm sure there are plenty of players who make sacrifices without fully calculating the outcome, based on intuition.

If you can calculate a sacrifice all the way to the end then it isn't a sacrifice. It's a combination.

All true sacrifices are speculative.

 Gee, that has a simple beauty to it.

 Good show! The learning continues.

I guess it comes down to definitions but I tend to agree with UniqueUsername. I like the definition used by Silman in his book "Reassess your chess" which is widely regarded as one of the best books out there. On page 359 of Silman's book it states:

Sacrifice: The voluntary offer of material for the purpose of gaining a more favourable advantage than the material investment. Unlike a combination, a sacrifice is not a cut and dried affair, and there is usually an element of uncertainty associated with it.

He's not the strongest player, but it's all about teaching the amateur to understand chess and develop good habits. There are many GM's who don't explain the ideas behind some moves sometimes probably because they think they are self explanatory. I think it would be interesting to compare analyisis from a chess teacher rated 2000 to one rated 2600. 2600 would be more technically correct for sure, but I think 2000 would explain his ideas alot more. When I annotate a game I explain the ideas with a lot of detail because I think it's important to understand these ideas and not just the tactics.

Hmmmm I misunderstood what a speculative sacrifice was.

Ah come on man, there are only a couple thousand IM's (below 2000) world wide, they can't be mediocre.

Unless you mean that he is mediocre compared to stronger IM's, I wouldn't know about that.

The only chess books I own are "Silmans how to Reassess your Chess" and "Understanding the Chess Openings".

My strength is, like I said probably between 1600-1700. You mentioned in an earlier thread that you have so many chess books you don't know what to do with them all.

My point is, could you reccommend your favourites that you think would help a player at my level improve to 1800-1900?

Just how are 'speculative' and 'unsound' being used here? Are they evaluative terms? Using them evaluatively, and especially as near-synonyms, as in r-n-o's Oxford quote, seems to me to obscure an important difference. I think we would normally arrive at 'unsound' after the event, in this case after analysis done after the game, but 'speculative' seems more like a description of the state of mind of the player making the sacrifice at the time. So a sacrifice could be speculative but sound, not speculative but unsound, etc. The two concepts are independent of each other. I'll stop now, before I start sounding like Donald Rumsfeld and his known unknowns etc.