Talk:Sacrifice (chess)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am unconvinced by this distinction: 'The primary way of classifying sacrifices is as pseudo and true sacrifices. The former type are also called "sham" sacrifices.' I do not think 'sham' or 'pseudo sacrifice' is really a part of chess parlance - it seems to me a pernickity term, maybe used by US trainers to disillusion glory-hunting students or something. It does not crop up much in New In Chess, for instance, and I don't recall that Informator has a symbol for it - these are the two premier world chess publications, and their authority thus trumps the references at the bottom of this article too. I don't personally use one of the big, famous commercial chess databases btw; if one of them comes with this classification then maybe I would bow to the point. But I suspect not.

Also the article is inconsistent on the distinction between the two as well. For instance, a Greek Gift Sacrifice ('true') is usually either a Checkmate sacrifice ('pseudo') or a Material gain sacrifice ('pseudo', btw, usually based on a discovered check eg skelletally: white has Qg4, Ng5; black has Kg6, Qd8; 1. Ne6+).

I think there are definitely short-term and long-term sacrifices, and also temporary sacrifices. Neither subset offers a primary level of classification, nor do they correspond to sham or what-not. Basically I think this distinction just does not reflect what chess is, although might be a useful part of training or explaining at low standards of play. Maybe the statement I quote at the top of the page should therefore be replaced by "One way of classifying sacrifices is ... as used by ... however, advanced chess literature rarely reflects this classification, and there are some obvious logical problems with it too" - as a compromise.Tommy-Chivs 14:02, 1 July 2006 (UTC)