Tal, the magician of Riga, liked to say that he wanted to demonstrate that in chess two plus two often equals five. By this he meant that chess combat cannot be reduced to a simple mathematical equation. For him, positional sensitivity, the direction of the attack took precedence over the precise calculation of variants. By this he wanted to be the best disciple of the very respected Austrian master Rudolf Spielmann (1883 -1942), great rival in his time of Capablanca and Alekhine, who was the first to theorize material disinterestedness in his book
The Art of Sacrifice to the chess
.
For the man nicknamed the
“Knight of the King's Gambit”
, there were two kinds of chess gift: the pseudo-sacrifice, calculable down to the end of the variants and the intuitive sacrifice, which he qualified as a
“real”
sacrifice . It was obviously the latter that captivated him. In an attempt to unravel the mysteries of offensive play, he will establish a classification.
To succeed, a speculative sacrifice had to be guided…
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