Sacrifice City

Hello everyone! This forum isn't a one and done thing. This forum will hopefully recieve semi-consistent updates with new positions and new sacrificial ideas.

What IS a sacrifice? A sacrifice is a tactic in chess in which one side gives up material in the short term, but will either provide more material compensation, positional compensation, or just checkmating the opponent.

If you want to, you can add on to this forum with your own sacrifices, using the insert chessboard feature. Just copy the FEN, Upload it, insert the moves (and also explain them, please!) and click the box that says "puzzle" under the theme tab.

But for now, let's start slow, and build over time. Some of these sacrifices will be immediate; some sacrifices, more slow. Some will be obvious continuations, while others will be subtle threats. A lot of them will be dynamic attacks (well, mostly from me), but who knows? YOU can upload some defensive sacrifices, if you have any.

But for now...something simple.

why don't you just write blogs instead

Here is a puzzle that will fit in here quite nicely, white sacrifices every piece he has except for 1 pawn that delivers the death blow to black:

This 1850's gem is known as the "immortal chess problem", white to move and mate in 9

Well, that's a ridiculously cool puzzle.

What's missing in the story and the 1st example is necessity. Sacrifices make no impression unless they are required to achieve an objective. Black wins in so many ways in the first diagram that one falls asleep over it. Of course, drdos7's example is of a completely different stature. To turn diagram 1 into a sacrificial puzzle you'll need to raise the bar by requiring a checkmate in 5 moves. That would make it OK!

Ah, I'm sorry. I just assumed that every puzzle implied one fastest way.
From now on, I'll specify a mate in how many moves, or a white to move and win/draw idea if there is no immediate checkmate.
Thank you, Arisktotle
(Also do you just LIVE in the more puzzle forums or something? You're always here.)

Currently I am here almost every day but still with long gaps in the hours. Peculiarly because I'm ill and therefore more behind the keyboard than outside where I prefer to be.

Chess.com's puzzle logic is hard to explain. First of all, chess.com's own puzzles are win-puzzles (very rare; draw puzzles) and not checkmate puzzles. But when a checkmate comes nearby (commonly at 1 to 3 moves), it expects you to find it. So it will lure you into winning a queen and just when you are there you are expected to switch horses and find the emerging checkmate. The main aim for chess.com is to force you to find the "only-move" at every turn, as the interface can only handle one reply from you. So it will never make you choose between a +10 and a +11 scoring move but it may (and does) expose its underbelly for the checkmate kill. As a player you would never be able to play the moves from the chess.com perspective. It's wild and geared to keep the solution going and not to find the "best" defenses!

As a chess.com puzzle yours is on the borderline. Winning the queen is obvious but a mate in 4 comes into the picture as well at that point. Don't know what the puzzle engine would do with it. That is to say, besides never including this puzzle since black is winning way too easy with its material surplus. It's only a challenge as a checkmate puzzle!

As humans we need not emulate chess.com's puzzle logic but can conform to the standard types in the world of formal chess compositions. Which are fortunately crystal clear in comparison to the wild logic of chess.com puzzles. You either specify a directmate format (mate in n moves) or a study format (win or draw). The study format forces you to present balanced starting positions. There is no point in winning a piece when you are already a queen ahead! You cannot escape from "only-move" solutions as the puzzle interface can handle just one correct move per turn. Not much of a limitation since this is already the case in all good puzzles!