When to sacrifice a Pawn? | Positional Sacrifice | Advanced Level | GM Arkadij Naiditsch

When sacrificing material, we usually want to get immediate advantages such as winning material back with a better position or reaching a mating attack against our opponent. The positional sacrifice is different and does not lead to a straightforward win of the game or material. By giving up a pawn, a piece or an exchange, we look for long-term positional advantages like more active pieces, initiative, development advantage or the control of key squares and open files. In this video, GM Arkadij Naiditsch shows, based on practical examples, typical positional sacrifices, where one side sacrifices material in order to get strategic advantages. There are a lot of positional sacrifices and usually a positional sacrifice is a sacrifice of a pawn or sometimes of several pawns, a sacrifice of an exchange, a piece, a rook or a queen.

The reasons for pawn sacrifices are different and they can be:
1. For a better development or just to disturb the development of your opponent.
2. For a good piece coordination, where sacrificing a pawn can lead to a domination of the game.
3. It can be used to open your opponent’s castled king position and to start a decisive attack.

There are a few general points you need to know about positional sacrifices:

1. A positional sacrifice is more or less a long-term investment. We are not gaining something immediately but we are hoping to gain a lot in the future.
2. Very often a positional pawn sacrifice is done in order to get a development advantage which can for example lead to a mating attack on your opponent’s king.

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[Chessfactor]

How did you like this lesson? Let us know your questions and comments, we’ll be happy to answer them!

[RedGaming]

Brilliant games and great explanation. Love that you show the entire games so we get to see what openings and structures the critical moments originated from.

[manjulamondal]

Can you make a vedio in concept of how to think like a grand master

[hungdavid]

17:36 "...black tries bishop D7, at least to develop something, better later than never, but in this game, it's basically never" :D

[bogdansoc]

Lesson is great, but can you please centralize the board, it's driving me crazy...

[S-Bbi-turbo]

Great video !!

By the way what are you think about the Agadmator Variation of the London?

[gregp.]

Thanks to Chessfactor for all the educational videos. But in this regard I like the videos from Mr. Astaneh or Mr. Ostrovskiy more. They are not rushing and their explanations are more deeper. 'Advanced Level' doesn't have to mean that you are explaining the obvious and staying on the surface. Quantity over quality... By the way: I am not a beginner and prefer the great intermediate and advanced lessons from Chessfactor. But it has to be allowed to say that here I am not impressed by the educational skills by Mr. Naiditsch.