Queen Sacrifices: From Obvious To Impossible

The 2024 Champions Chess Tour Finals was an exciting event with many thrilling encounters, combinations, and blunders: everything chess spectators love to watch. In this smorgasbord of "tasty" chess, you could easily miss the following one:

While it looks like just another typical GM Magnus Carlsen game where he ground down an opponent in a long, boring endgame, there was a beautiful opportunity missed by GM Ian Nepomniachtchi. Can you spot it?

Why did Nepomniachtchi, who is an excellent tactician, miss this not-very-complicated combination? He still had about five minutes left on his clock, which is an eternity for any experienced Puzzle Rush player. So, what happened?

There are two kinds of queen sacrifices. If you give up your queen for positional benefits, then you usually get some sort of material in return. It could be, for example, a rook and a minor piece or just two minor pieces. In such cases, chess players usually don't calculate much, mostly relying on their intuition. The following famous game of IM Rashid Nezhmetdinov is a good example:

It is absolutely clear that White couldn't possibly calculate all the variations, so his intuition and understanding of chess helped him to see a very serious positional compensation for the material loss.

Today, we are going to talk about another kind of queen sacrifice: When you give up your strongest piece for nothing. It is quite obvious that no positional benefits would compensate a loss of a Queen for just a pawn, so, in situations like this, very precise calculation is required.

Fortunately, most of such sacrifices belong to certain well-known patterns, which make it not that difficult for experienced players to spot them quite quickly. Here are some classic examples:

This is a textbook example of a deflection. Since Nd7 blocked White's access to the key d8-square, White was happy to give up his queen to deflect the knight.

This is another well-known tactic. White lures the black king to d8 to deliver a deadly double-check. 

Certain tactical patterns repeat again and again and again. Judge for yourself:

Then, seven years later:

And then 30 years later:

Now you can see why it usually takes only seconds for a strong player to spot such combinations.

Another kind of queen sacrifice lures an opponent's king out of the safety of its castle and forces it to move forward, where it'll get checkmated. Such king hunts are always a lot of fun to play, but they require more calculation since it usually takes 10 moves or more to finally checkmate the king. Here are two classic textbook examples:

Or a modern classic from the American Chess Superman:

Finally, there is a kind of queen sacrifice that is unusual or even unique. Let's take, for example, the famous "Gold Coin Game." Can you find a winning shot in the following position?

It is not a very difficult combination, just an unusual one. But even unusual combinations happen more than once in chess. Take a look at the following game:

Finally, there are truly unique combinations that you don't see too frequently in chess. We can see an example in the following game. At first glance, it doesn't look remarkable:

But why didn't White fork Black's pieces by playing 22.Nb6? It was a trap, and both grandmasters saw it. Can you find Black's idea?

Now try to find what both players missed and why the fork was indeed a winning move!

This tactical shot is very unusual, and I don't recall seeing anything like it. If you have more examples of this idea, please share them in the comments. Since this combination is so unique, it is not a big surprise that both very strong grandmasters missed it in their calculations.

Now let's return to the game Carlsen vs. Nepomniachtchi. Black's queen sacrifice with 22...Qxf2!! reminds me, to some extent, of the shocking sacrifice from the game Short vs. Miles. It is also quite unexpected and doesn't fit into well-known patterns. In my opinion, that explains why Nepomniachtchi missed it.

Former world champion GM Anatoly Karpov once said: "Combinations with a queen sacrifice are among the most striking and memorable." I am sure our readers had such beauties in their own games. Please share your gems in the comments so everybody can enjoy them!