Walter Oh, Y12A
The Beauty of a Billiant Move (in chess)
If you have played chess on chess.com, you have probably seen the symbol of two exclamation marks (!!), showing an incredible sacrifice. The background is a light greenish blue circle, as seen in the image to the right. These moves involve sacrificing one or more pieces to stay winning in the position. And one thing is guaranteed, it keeps you in a good position where you aren’t completely losing. It is incredibly hard to find, as the tactic behind the brilliant move is hard to find, and you will either have to recover material with a good follow up or continue playing optimally. In this article, I would like to provide an insight as to what a brilliant move should look like and how beautiful and incredible the moves are.
This position on the right is from a 10 minute (rapid) game I played. As black, I found an incredible move, and I took a white pawn with my bishop (originally on E7) on B4. There are three main reasons why I did this.
If you take the bishop with the queen, then there is a back rank mate with the rook on C2 going down to C1 and since the queen no longer protects that square, the rook on A1 is forced to take, and I deliver back rank mate by taking the white rook with my rook on C8.
It prevents the knight on D2 from moving. If you look carefully, the white bishop on F4 could potentially protect the square I am threatening checkmate on, except that the knight on D2 is blocking the way. So, instead of the bishop taking the pawn, I played a move like rook on C8 to C3, attacking the queen. The opponent would have to move knight on D2 to B3, blocking the attack to the queen with the knight and protecting the backrank threat with both the knight and the bishop.
Obviously, the bishop is attacking the queen, so the opponent should move it out of danger, since they can’t take it. However, the queen is actually nearly trapped except for the capture (which doesn’t work as discussed above) and queen B3. Every other square is protected by my center pawns. However, if the queen moves to B3, there is a very interesting line, where I go queen E6, offering a queen trade. However, if you take the queen, you end up getting checkmated, the same thing as taking the bishop (which is still free to be taken). The only viable safe square for the queen to try and hold on to the position is B1. But now I make another brilliant move, queen A2! Leaving the queen under attack of both the rook and the queen! However, neither of them can take, as that leaves their back-rank vulnerable.
a. In case you are wondering how this is winning, Queen D4 by black is the only way to try and hang on to the queen and checkmate, but now I once again sacrifice the queen on A1! Capturing the rook with the queen! Once again, the queen can not be captured, as white has backrank mate once again. There is no way for black to prevent checkmate either. If black plays any random move, I take the queen with a check, and black is forced to take back with the king, where I bring my rook down to C1, which is checkmate. Black has only two moves to prevent this checkmate, namely, E3 and F3. I play D3 if the opponent plays E3, and I play E3 myself if the opponent plays F3. Checkmate is inevitable after the pawn push, as there is no way to protect the queen, nor the checkmate threat.
Therefore, not only is my opponent forced to lose the queen to prevent checkmate, they still have to deal with the checkmate threat even after the queen's sacrifice. Overall, the beauty of this move is both the checkmate threat as well as making the opponent unable to defend the threat.
This shows how beautiful a brilliant move can be, where a brilliant move is potentially followed by more sacrifices and creating more weaknesses, as well as having multiple threats. Yes, it is hard to find, but once you find it, it brings you not only a sense of achievement, but also a sense of pride and joy, where it feels like you actually know the game better than ever before. Good luck in finding your own sacrifice(s) in your games!