Your best sacrifice?

Anyone want to share something about a game where you sacrificed material (not opening gambit) and it turned out great? Some details about the situation, and maybe a position or full game score?

Background: Class players are notoriously materialistic. In the 20 years that I played OTB tournaments, I never (intentionally 😉) sacrificed material to advance my position. In blitz, I'd play some gambits, and occasionally sac the exchange if I could get control of a long diagonal, but didn't have very good luck with either.

HOWEVER, when I was rated about 1500 - 1600 I played a postal game (yes, postcards) with a friend. As White in a McCutcheon French, I followed "book" to a point where Queens were exchanged before move 20, and a note said this line was a Tal suggestion and he evaluated it as advantageous to White.

Now, I've never even TRIED to play like Tal. But I spent some time trying to figure out how White could have an advantage. Without help from any model games, I came up with the idea of advancing my Kingside pawns and sacrificing two of them so that one could promote to Queen. My friend resigned when the pawn promoted.

Unfortunately, no game score. I might have it packed away somewhere, but have never been motivated enough to search for it.

I'm sure there are a lot better examples out there. You just need to share them with us.

User Contributions:

Exacto

42,659,770

  1. Just now lost a post mortem argument to stockfish who was acting like a complete know-it-all. Link to Game

  2. Me : develop my pieces towards the center.
    Stockfish: you missed key opportunities to favorably transform the central pawn structure. Me: continue to develop with semi-transparent threats to gain an initiative. Stockfish: you should have been playing towards the break e5-e6-- your semi vague developing moves missed the most important idea in the position. Me : play the main idea in the position as a pawn sacrifice instead of for free as stockfish was intending. Stockfish: after finding the correct idea, you completely missed the tactical justification of the pawn sac which cost you time.

  3. Me : finds the Brilliant rook lift that gives up a pawn permanently and a piece temporarily for a crushing initiative based purely on a lead in development and the opponent's weak dark squares. Stockfish: since you took a +4.1 and reduced it to 0.00 a few moves ago, I'm willing to consider your sham sacrifices as decent since they don't change the evaluation of 0.00. Me : I play a material winning continuation after my opponent blunders. Stockfish: Yes +6.8 is fine but the mate in two you missed was even better.

  4. Me: brilliantly declines an opponent queen sacrifice to maintain total control over the position. Stockfish: that was a mistake.

comfortable

Just now lost a post mortem argument to stockfish who was acting like a complete know-it-all.
Link to Game

Sai7179

Just one week ago at the local club, I played this 2000 rated player at a Classical game. I was worse for much of it, until an exchange sacrifice followed by a bishop sacrifice secured me a draw.

psmathgeek

My first win against a 1500 USCF player in a classical OTB game was on the white side of a Smith-Morra. I realized a bit out of the opening that I had clearly misplayed somewhere (I hadn’t played it a ton) and Black had gotten developed and kept the pawn. I thought for about 20-25 minutes about how to regain the initiative instead of just losing slowly and decided to sacrifice an exchange to keep both of my bishops on and bring my second rook into the game. It’s still objectively worse, I was around -2 for many moves, but practically I felt that it was my best shot to keep throwing punches and hope he would miss something.

Deet

This was a daily game a couple of years ago that involves a few sacs. Being a daily game, I was able to make some pretty concrete conclusions on the later ones, but I felt good about grabbing and keeping the initiative pretty much all the way through.

[Site "Chess.com"]
[White "Deet"]
[Black "nn"]
[Result "1-0"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 Be7 6. Bf4 O-O 7. Qd2 a6 8.
O-O-O h6 9. g4 Bxg4 10. Rg1 Bxd1 11. Qxd1 Ne8 12. Bxh6 Bf6 13. Nd5 Kh7 14. Nxf6+
Qxf6 15. Bg5 Qe5 16. f4 Qa5 17. Nf5 g6 18. Rg3 Rh8 19. Rh3+ Kg8 20. Ne7+ Kg7 21.
Qd4+ f6 22. b4 Qxa2 23. Bxf6+ Nxf6 24. Nf5+ gxf5 25. Rg3+ Kf7 26. Bc4+ Qxc4 27.
Qxc4+ Kf8 28. Qxc7 Rh7 29. Qxd6+ Kf7 30. e5 Ne4 31. Qg6+ Ke7 32. Qxh7+ Ke6 33.
Rg6+ Kd5 34. Qxb7+ Kd4 35. Qxa8 Nd7 36. Qa7+ 1-0