Positional Sacrifices

Rating:
Summary: great idea, but slightly mis-focused presentation
Review: The author's key point is that positional sacrifices differ from combinations by the degree of uncertainty inherent in them.

Including chapter 1, The Psychology of Sacrifices; chapter 2, Theoretical and Standard Sacrifices; and the final 20 element quiz, this book has all of nine chapters. The middle 6 chapters make up the meat of the book and include

chapter 3, Sacrifices to create a passed pawn
chapter 4, Sacrifices to destroy the opponent's center
chapter 5, Sacrifices to open lines

chapter 6, The Indian bishop
chapter 7, The "Karpovian" exchange sacrifice
chapter 8, Queen for Rook and Bishop sacrifices

This book covers pawn, exchange, piece, even queen sacrifices in different circumstances and to different ends. Some of the examples are truly amazing, well beyond anything that I could ever conceive. A good grasp of positional considerations is needed to appreciate some of these, even though the positional elements and why they are important are generally very well explained. Any tactical variations are given at length, and this defintely helps the reader come to terms with the examples.

Where I think the author misfires, is in pursuing each example game to the very end. This leads to some very complicated alternatives being explored, many of them well past the point of the sacrifice. If you need closure on whether or not the sacrifice proved successful, this may be good. But it limits the number of examples given.

I think the content of this book could help most players below expert rating appreciate some ideas for the first time. Seeing a winning passed pawn motif conjured out a position that contained not even a wisp of such a possibility is truly enlightening. Also includes fine examples (and explanation!) of the compensation arising from certain pawn and piece sacrifices.

Of course, you can always ignore the indepth variations until you are in the mood and simple read the text and get a lot out of this book.

Handy size, well-written, few if any typos. Three and a half stars, rounded down to three.