There are some chess games you play, win, and forget about almost immediately. Then there are those rare moments where you make a move and even you have to pause for a second and think, Did I really just see that?
This was one of those moments, i was really proud of myself, I was playing a game on Chess.com after being on leave and not playing for quite some time,but i picked it up and started playing again. My rating was at 1200 plus and i think i lost 9 games in a row. Lol!!, and i dropped all the way to 980 or thereabout and now im at 1208 i think, so yeah im not really good at it, i used to think i was really great at chess but chee.com has definitely humbled me.
This particular game i played and uploaded, i was in quite a bind and then it just came to me, sometimes when im playing its like my head just locks and i just play rubbish and other times im amazing at least for my level.
I had just played 24. Qf2, and the position looked complicated. Black's king was sitting on g8, with pieces around it providing what appeared to be reasonable protection. My knight was already on h5, and my rook was positioned on g1.
The rook went straight up the , capturing the pawn on g7 and giving check.
At first glance, it looks almost ridiculous. Why would I willingly throw a rook into the enemy king's position? and that is exactly what makes the move so satisfying, chess is a game of scarifices, a game of the bigger picture to be exact.
Chess.com immediately classified the move as brilliant, explaining that the rook was being sacrificed for checkmate and i love seeing the bright blue notification!!
In other words, the rook was not really being sacrificed for material. It was being sacrificed because the king was already trapped. The beauty of the move was that I wasn't looking at the rook as something I needed to preserve. I was looking at the position as a whole. The black king had limited escape squares, and the surrounding pieces were actually working against it. The rook sacrifice forced the position open and created the mating sequence.
A rook is worth more than a pawn, i mean everybody knows that but chess isn't always about calculating whether one piece is worth more than another. Sometimes the most valuable piece on the board is the one you're willing to give away if doing so completely destroys your opponent's position.
