Chess Patterns ❯ Tactical Patterns | Sacrifices ❯ Pawn Sacrifice
Pawn Sacrifice
Pawn Sacrifice
A Pawn Sacrifice is a deliberate move where you offer a pawn to your opponent. The first diagram above shows a tactical pawn sacrifice (calculation-based, risk-free, leading to immediate advantages like checkmate or gain of material): 1.b5 Kxb5 2.Qb7#.
The second diagram above shows a positional sacrifice (intuitional, long-term): 1.d4 sacrifices the backward d-pawn to gain strong piece activity against the exposed black King. A common long-term pawn sacrifice in the opening is called a gambit.
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Designed with Love in Italy
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Master the Pawn Sacrifice
When we started adding a playful touch to chess learning, we looked through thousands of videos and hundreds of books to find the best resources out there. Here's our curated selection of the best content we encountered on Pawn Sacrifices. We also included some smaller creators who are growing fast and we believe deserve your attention. Check out these resources if you want to master this type of sacrifice.
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Mastering Chess Tactics: The Art of Pawn Sacrifice
A very nice video by Soren Chess Coach that serves as a great introduction to the various themes that lie behind Pawn Sacrifices. Full of useful examples.
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Mikhail Tal's Magic Pawn Sacrifices. Tal vs Donner
Have a look at the Pawn sacs in this incredible 1968 game by Mikhail Tal, commented and analyzed by the excellent Chess Wisdom YouTube channel.
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Blocking Pawn Sacrifices: Every Sacrifice*
This is one of several lessons that WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili created for the chess.com “Every Sacrifice” series. Brilliant game commented here. At the end, go for the interactive challenges.
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The Art of Sacrifice in Chess*
This is a classic, a masterpiece on sacrifices. Rudolf Spielmann has done such an excellent work in presenting all types of Sacrifices that the book is still a must even almost 100 years later since its conception. Not for beginners.
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Tactics Time! 1001 Chess Tactics from the Games of Everyday Chess Players*
This book by Tim Brennan is an excellent and affordable collection of 1001 positions taken from games of everyday players (no GMs) and thus are much more likely to happen in your own actual games. For beginners.