Inspired by Stron6's forum on Greek Gift patterns, I would like to write something about sacrifices in general, I'm a trash player, but I think I've sacrificed enough to have some sort of grasp on it, enough to give at least some advice, but anyway, first I would like to showcase an example of when to NOT sacrifice:

At move 20, I had decided I was super smart and was going to sacrifice a piece for what seemed like an overwhelming attack on the black king, so the game of course went Bxh6, dxc3, Bxc4 which is ALSO the sacrifice of a bishop while simultaneously being a discovered attack on the undefended knight, takes and takes, material is equal, right? NUH UH!! I have a bishop that will be captured on h6 after Qxe4; but all good, I had seem this whole sequence up until this point, Qf4 and let's go grab that weak pawn and attack the exposed king...Except I failed to consider the safety of my own king, and got hit with a forced queen trade via Qd4+.

So, how should I have avoided that? There are two things I had to consider here, my own king safety and my opponent's moves, the attack may have looked promissing for ME, but it looked even more promising for them, as even if Qd4+ wasn't a move, I'm left with a position where my king is completely wide open (and so is the center) with my only active piece being a queen, as I will struggle to keep up any hope of an attack, they will very quickly consolidate and go after my king. Now, if you are a little more attentive you're probably wondering "Wait a minute, why Qf4 if Qxc6 is a free piece?" because that is also losing to the absolutely disgusting move cxb2, which actually brings a third point to this discussion where I should also have considered my opponent's space on the board.

So, in short, what did I fail to consider? My opponent's resources and my own king safety, how can one become better at considering those?

Let's run the classic checklist, checks, captures and attacks, but not for ourselves, for your OPPONENT! Would I have played this entire line if I had seem Qd4+ at the end of the line? (probably cuz i'm an idiot, but you're not).

I would like now to show another example of when sacrificing is a terrible idea.

You see, we don't always sacrifice for an attack, sometimes we sacrifice for some sort of initiative, a way to try and put pressure on our opponents via compensation, we can give away a whole bishop but if there's enough compensation for it, you're gonna be doing just fine, compensation can come in the form of an attack, a tactic, a positional advantage, stuff like that.

Well, in this game however, there was absolutely no compensation as I'm just a moron and played the move Rxf5 while clearly their pawn structure is ridiculously solid, I don't know what kind of lovecraftian spirit posessed me to play such a deranged move thinking I would have the initiative here after infiltrating with my knight and having the bishop open, but this game is worth to look at because this is not just about me being an idiot, it's about my opponent being very smart with their defense, so after exf6, Ne5, they immediately start to use their king as a defensive piece, now my knight has no target at all, I play Kh1 because honestly, I knew I was lost and had no idea what to play, Nd7 and I have no choice other than to trade while already down material which as everyone knows is not good, Nf7 in pure desperation and in comes the queen, again may I bring back the concept of king safety here which I think I don't need to comment on why the king is unsafe...I mean, there's nothing around the king, nothing, couple moves later my pieces have absolutely no coordination and I resign.

The thing that went wrong here is much more about understimating the defense and overstimating my own attack, if I run the checklist here, nothing will be ticked really, did they have any attack, check or capture after Rxf5? Not really, what they had was an extremely solid position and good defensive resources, that is another thing that cannot fly under your radar when you're trying to execute a sacrificial attack, your opponent won't roll over and die, they are going to try and make things as hard as they can for you and you have to pay attention to whatever their resources are.

Another important thing to note here on the topic of this game in specific, is that solid positions such as what my opponent had are not meant to be played like this, you can't just barge in with a sacrifice thinking you're going to break apart their whole structure, which brings me to another point: You are NOT going to get an attack in every single game you play, I had a completely comfortable position in that game until I decided that I wanted to generate an attack, the same goes for a sacrifice, sacrifices have nothing to do with "playstyle", they're not moves you play just because you felt like doing it, in chess, you must do as the position asks you to do.

"Ahah but how about Mikhail Tal-" That's just a stereotype of Mikhail Tal that you created in your head, go look at his positional games they are all masterclasses, never once did he disagree with positional concepts, therefore you also shouldn't.

Now, sometimes I get this sacrifice stuff right, let's look at when a sacrifice is possible but it doesn't end in a devastating attack.

The move I want to draw your attention to is Rxf3, a move that is actually forced mate but I failed to see the continuation, but then why did I play it anyway? Because I knew I had the initiative in this position by removing one of their only active pieces in the game, sure my opponent played Be3 and blundered M1, but even if they hadn't done that, I saw their best move (Qg2) and I was ready with Qe1+, I would target the weak pawns and my bishops are completely crushing, while, much like in my first game, his only active piece is his queen and his king is absolutely exposed, this is an example of a sacrifice that was, well, meant to be mate but turned into more of a positional sacrifice, let's now look at a purely positional sacrifice:

So, this game had been progressing normally as we transitioned into a middle game where black was trying to generate some sort of play on the queen side, I suddenly thought to myself "Hey, isn't e5 very weak if I remove the knight?" and Rxd7 appeared on the board, allowing me to land the knight on e5 and completely switching the momentum of the game, as now I'm threatening their queen and the f7 square, Qxg2 is a move that only helps me with bringing another piece to the attack, and just a few moves later the black king is checkmated.

There's something in common between the two games I just showed you, in both games I have much more well coordinated pieces than my opponent while they have no way of generating any meaningful counter play, how do you know that though? It's not uncommon that you'll understimate your opponent's position, after all.

It's a combination of...Plenty of things to be honest, but I'd say what truly matters the most is for you to be conscious of your own weaknesses first of all, and then evaluate if your attack outweights that, evaluating this kind of stuff is difficult, you may see a ghost, you may overthink, but chess is not a game of words, you can't ever think to yourself "I won't play this move, because this that they're going to do looks dangerous" what does looking dangerous even mean? Explain it to yourself, how is it dangerous? If you can't see a clear reason, but you can see a clear threat that YOU are creating, chances are that your position is stronger, there are nuances to this of course, it could be that both sides have a threat, could be that you're understimating your opponent, but that's something that you'll truly only acquire with practice.

What kind of practice? You ask...For starters, puzzles can be a good way of exercising your calculating skill and your ability to recognize tactical patters, stuff you'll ALWAYS need if you're going for a sacrifice, but another thing that gets slept on is how positional understanding comes in handy with sacrifices, what are the dynamics of the position? What weakness could I exploit? You can also elevate your knowledge in this area via puzzles, but there's nothing better than actually playing the game and familiarizing yourself with more and more positions, learning what to play and what not to, and remember, not every position needs a sacrifice.

I mentioned the concept of evaluating when your sacrifice outweights the threats your opponent are creating, that is often times tied to keeping up the initiative and not letting your opponent dictate the course of the game, even if it were to cost you material, let's look at two examples, shall we?

In this game, it was a pretty average attack until the moment further advance into the king seemed unlikely since I had no pawns left, that's when Rh5 came into the board, now that's a very light sacrifice, as of course if gxh5 were to happen the black king would be checkmate, so my opponent logically did not take the rook, and went to play the move c5 with a discovered attack on my queen, the queen is worth a lot but do you know what's worth much more than a queen? Your whole position! Again, it's not about the material, it's about doing damage to their position, a position cannot function if there are no pieces playing, and at that moment I knew there was no way forward for them as I'd remove (at least) two very active pieces from the board, and what are they getting in exchange for taking my queen? A position where the king is completely defenseless, every piece i have left is active and ready to go after the king meanwhile theirs stuck playing defense, no way to go forward at all as I'd like to reiterate once again one very important concept: King safety, my king is very cozy, theirs? Freezing off in the cold with the castle walls having been blown off.

This is an example where you can give up a whole queen for an immediate attack because your initiative is ridiculously powerful, there are some fundamental stuff for this to work right, such as piece coordination and timing, you can't try to force your initiative if your pieces are scattered, it's just as I said a few lines above, a position does not function if the pieces are not playing, that doesn't apply only to having no pieces, that applies to the positioning and harmony between them too, how can you possibly give away material if you're not even using the material you have on the board properly? Had my second rook not been able to get in the game as quick as it could, the whole attack might very well not have worked out.

Now, did I see the whole line the moment I played Rh5? No, of course not, but I had an intuition, an instinct that told me that "hey, this just looks pretty good!" Of course that's also my subconscious speaking, having landed on dynamic positions such as the one showcased many many times, and that is another thing I'd like to talk about very quickly, it's true that sacrifices are connected to intuition, sometimes the move just feels right to you, you play it and voila! (you blundered away the game) It's a good move! But even that can be developed, it'll come naturally for some, not so much for others, but it's a thing that can be worked on too.

For my second and final example of this post, I would like to show another example where "the most important piece" is completely given up for a lead in the initiative.

Things get weird very quickly as the game goes ...Bf4, e5, Bg5, and my opponent probably thought "Well, they'll move their queen, I will save my knight and the game will go on" except my opponent completely forgot to calculate the capture sequence that was about to ensue, so with a queen hanging, I captured the knight on d4, Bxd8, dxc3, bxc3, Rxd8.

Now, how the hell is this keeping up the initiative? You just gave away the most powerful attacking piece you lunatic! Again again, nothing here is about the material, and may I remind you, chess is NOT a game of words, what does "most powerful piece" even mean? It's a game of what's happening on the board, my queen may be gone, but i'm left with six beautiful pieces ready to activate and target their now severely weakened position, they have no defenders anymore! I took them all! I quickly trade off the light square bishop, for it's the only piece doing something that they have left, and ironically, the side left with the "most powerful piece" can't really do much to my position, dare I say I was the one attacking as I quickly infiltrated with both knights (Two knights coordinate absurdly well by the way) and for the rest of the game, I simply did my best to continuously create threats, only slowing down when my opponent also had no active moves, and this pressure I put on was more than enough for me to win the game.

Admittedly, it wasn't the most sound thing to do, but even then I just knew this couldn't be so bad, I didn't check with an engine but it's probably not going to call it completely lost, giving up my queen came purely from intuition but again, it also came from understanding I wouldn't suffer in the position that would appear on the board after, why did I think that? Many points I've already brought up here, I considered my own activity and theirs, looked at my own weaknesses and theirs, I thought of what they could do to me, how the capture sequence could go wrong, and decided that even if it didn't go according to plan my chances were still there, I couldn't help but feel like I was struggling much more to find moves for my opponent than moves for myself.

Notice how it didn't boil down to "This looks scary", "It's scary to not have a queen" what is truly scary is having an open position with no pieces to occupy the squares, of course this is tough to do, and to be honest I wasn't extremely sure of it, but again, I had two things telling me it wasn't too bad: My intuition and my experience, things I built out of simply playing the game.

So in the end, sacrificing material can lead to a vast forest of possibility, you can do it for your position, for your attack, for your initiative, for your own safety too! I wish I had an example of a defensive sacrifice with me but I couldn't find one, it's something to be treated carefully, let's remind ourselves that you cannot sacrifice just because you feel like it. "But what about that intuition talk-" Yes, but even on the topic of intuition, there's still thought happening, that's when the evaluation comes into play, if the move you so desperatly feel like playing is truly going to be worth it, can your opponent counter it? What threats are they generating in the ensuing position? Intuition for the game is a beautiful thing, but it's not an irrational process! Much like a sacrifice cannot be played without clear planning ahead, it requires for you to always be one step ahead all the time (I've showcased examples after all of what can happen if you're not) and for you to believe in your position, believe in your own attack much more than you believe in your opponent's.

It is a complicated concept, tough to understand, difficult to execute properly, it's something that might even be rare to happen for you depending on how you play this beautiful game called chess, but it's something that's there too, something that you can use to your advantage and so can your opponent's, so I truly help all this yapping meant something for at least one person, honestly, I could go on forever, but this is where I'll be ending it, long text lol.

"Chess, first of all, is art."

Kiriyama's Battle Royale

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