I assume that most of you prefer to see clean and flawless positional chess games, and are not too keen on unsound sacrifices a la Mikhail Tal.
But ... here's a few more.
Unsound sac, unclear position, but a bit of initiative :
en.lichess.org/WZA3qo8M/white#27My most insane tactical game in the last few months :
en.lichess.org/dH7HkLSK/black#30You play like Paul Morphy!
Rashid Nezhmetdinov would be so proud :')
I always thought that Rashid Nezhmetdinov was generally admiring beautiful tactical games and was not particularly fond of a-la Tal non-trivial and/or insane sacrifices. Correct me if I am wrong.
As for such tactics, I understand players who enjoy going into unbalanced positions offering sacs in a bid to psychologically challenge a human opponent, especially in OTB games. However, personally I dislike making moves that would be unsound and lead to a direct loss to a computer, but may turn out to be successful against a human opponent, except for cases of ultra-fast time controls and time scrambles. Such strategy is not for e sake of the game. If the latter turns out to be a victory, it would still not be appreciated by chess gods:)
There are some books written by GMs devoted to professional bluffing in chess. I am not familiar with their content, but some players may want to study those carefully.
Computers are interesting in this regard. It's true they used to be quite material hungry. But now that their strength has increased substantially, they're very happy to sacrifice material for initiative. For instance go put the starting position of the scotch into stockfish: e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6 d4 exd4 You'll find it really really wants to play Bc4 with it hopping constantly back and forth between Bc4 and Nxd4. After 4. .. Bc5 it makes the sac permanent with 5. c3.
And humans have long since understood this. It's funny we almost seem to go in a bell curve in regards to material. Weak players don't care much for material out of ignorance or inability to hold onto it in any case. And then your average to middle strength (which I think goes well into the mid-2300s) hold onto it for dear life since a pawn is certainly enough to win a game. And then once you get into the super-GMs where they're tossing material for initiative seemingly every game.
There is nothing wrong in tossing material for initiative as long as you evaluate this to be plausible even against a computer. But if you sac and still feel that the sac is incorrect since there is clear defense from your opponent and just hope that the other side just screws it up in a non-standard and unfamiliar position, this is more than controversial.
I'd agree there if you're starting with the assumption that you too are a computer. A sac like Bc4 against a computer would be poorly advised. It's going to lead to complex and open positions where a human stands no real chance from either side.
That reminds me : The last blitz tourney that Mikhail Tal played in, where he was seriously ill, he sacrificed a knight on d5 in a Sicilian defense game against Garry Kasparov. The knight sac was not correct but ... Kasparov lost the game nevertheless!
Interesting is also the game from Tal against Larsen where Larsen played with black : 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.Nf3 d6xe5 5.Nxe5 Nbd7?! Tal thought for perhaps 1 hour and refrained from the winning 6.Ne5xf7!
In another game Fischer did play 6.Nxf7 and Larsen got too optimistic at some point, and was swept off the board.
I've just looked up those three games :
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1649293http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1139722http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044244In the user comments there is a fantastic winning line that Tal gave after the game.
