10 April 2015

A Magnet Sacrifice

Chess vocabulary varies and can be colorful. This morning, as I was reading S. Tartakower and J. Du Mont, 500 Master Games of Chess (1975 [1952]), I came across an old term for the maneuver that is usually called decoy these days. The term attraction is also used by some, such as Chess Tempo.

White to move

This position came about in a miniature played by Henri Delaire against an opponent whose name was omitted from the records. It appears in the annotations to G. A. MacDonnell -- Anderssen, London 1862, which is my current Game of the Week.

The move 14.Qxf5+! is called "a magnet sacrifice" by Tartakower and Du Mont. Black's king is lured or attracted to a vulnerable square where it suffers additional assaults. Accepting the sacrifice leads to checkmate.

No comments:

Post a Comment