Jon Speelman: The joy of innumeracy

by Jonathan Speelman
2/18/2024 – Today’s column is about sacrifices and the exchange in particular. If you’re shown a chess position cold, then the first thing you do normally is to count the pieces just to check that the material is fairly balanced. But the relative activity is at least as important. The “joy of innumeracy” might turn out to be a valuable (in)ability in many chess positions! | Pictured: Lu Miaoyi at the 2023 Rapid and Blitz World Championships. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
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When 1 is greater than 3

[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]

Jon SpeelmanToday’s column is about sacrifices and the exchange in particular, which I imagined was a topic that I would have treated here fairly often. However, when I went back through my list of columns (and the titles are rather opaque, so I may have missed something) the first one I found which explicitly focused on this was #132 in October 2020, which I had entitled When 3 is greater than 5.

Following on from this, today’s explores the “joy of innumeracy”, which turns out to be a valuable (in)ability in many chess positions, especially as they are handled today.

If you’re shown a chess position cold, then the first thing you do normally is to count the pieces just to check that the material is fairly balanced. But the relative activity is at least as important, and exchange sacrifices often confer great amounts of energy as compensation.

I’ve got two examples today from the 4NCL: my own win last Sunday which followed an idea pioneered by Matthias Bluebaum against Markus Ragger at the Chennai Olympiad two years ago (and very possibly born of the beeping of an engine before that), and the brilliant upset win by William Claridge-Hansen against Constantin Lupulescu the day before.

To finish, a magnificently violent game which has been doing the rounds recently (so I guess you may have seen it already) in which a ferocious 14-year-old Chinese girl put an Italian grandmaster to the sword. She started by asserting (sacrificing a knight for a pawn) that 1>3, and he later made a good defensive exchange sacrifice. Near the end, the body count (under the conventional scoring) was 23 to 16 in Black’s favour, but she still crashed through.

Select an entry from the list to switch between games

In this Fritztrainer: “Attack like a Super GM” with Gukesh we touch upon all aspects of his play, with special emphasis on how you can become a better attacking player.

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Topics: Jon Speelman's Agony Column, Miaoyi Lu
Jonathan Speelman, born in 1956, studied mathematics but became a professional chess player in 1977. He was a member of the English Olympic team from 1980–2006 and three times British Champion. He played twice in Candidates Tournaments, reaching the semi-final in 1989. He twice seconded a World Championship challenger: Nigel Short and then Viswanathan Anand against Garry Kasparov in London 1993 and New York 1995.