What Are Rooks For? Part 1

Chess players know rooks are more powerful than a knight or a bishop. As they can move horizontally and vertically ,through any number of unoccupied squares. They love open positions, files and ranks(especially seventh or 2nd rank).Let's see what happens the rook can used to remove defenders, for strategic play.

As per Wikipedia

" An exchange sacrifice occurs when one player gives up a rook for a minor piece."

Let's have look at devastating rook sacrifice by Akiba Rubinstein .

 Our chess group found a similar idea  in the Open Spanish in the game between David Bronstein and Victor Korchnoi (where I hope you can find the last winning moves.)  which is instructive in nature as it shows how to play a pawn up positions against major pieces 

Now that we have seen some of the exchange sacrifices on f3 let's see some games where black sacrifices  a lot (Rxc3 and the Sicilian defense). 

Let's see white can do with the  exchange sacrifice in the Sicilian. More examples of double rook sacrifices will be in the next part (coming soon).