Defending after a Piece Sacrifice

Accepting a piece sacrifice can lead to complicated positions that require a sequence of accurate moves from the defending side, which sometimes is even challenging for the top players. We will look at two games from the recent FIDE World Cup that just ended a few days ago.

The first game is Tomashevsky vs. Aronian which ended in a draw after Aronian took the extra piece, but failed to find the winning sequence to draw and leave the tournament. The second game is Kamsky vs. Mamedyarov, where Kamsky sacrificed the piece and won the game after inaccurate response from Mamedyarov.

Instead of 24. ... gxf5?, black has a better way to continue ...

In the second game, white's position wasn't so interesting till now and positionally it was getting worse, but Kamsky found a way to take initiative ...

23. ... Kg7? was inaccurate, instead black should have played Qb6 or Qc6 to stop the e pawn from advancing.