Essential Chess Sacrifices

Sacrifices are an essential part of chess. Those who never consider sacrificing will miss countless opportunities and find that promising positions repeatedly slip away. Players who do not appreciate their opponent's sacrificial possibilities will be unable to see danger signs, and find themselves on the wrong end of too many king-hunts. In this unique book, popular author David LeMoir investigates in detail the most important standard sacrificial ideas. Rather than merely cataloguing the various possibilities and providing examples, he discusses the possible follow-ups to the sacrifices, the defensive options against them, and the positional factors that might suggest whether the sacrifice will be sound or unsound. There are many important types of chess positions that can only be played well by those who understand the thematic sacrifices that are possible. The sacrificial ideas covered in this book lie at the heart of some very popular opening systems, and indeed there are few games in which one or another of these sacrifices isn't relevant. David Lemoir is an experienced chess-player and writer. He twice won the championship of the West of England and was runner-up on four occasions. In 2000, he was the County Champion of Norfolk. In a successful career as a business strategy consultant, he has made good use of the strategic and decision-making skills that are developed by playing chess. He has earned a reputation for writing chess books that discuss important practical chess topics with great clarity. This is his third chess book.