Two days ago, Veselin Topalov played a wonderful rook sacrifice in Shamkir that some commented might be a move-of-the-year candidate. Today, Topalov's long-time adversary Vladimir Kramnik one-upped him with a possibly even more astonishing rook sacrifice. Kramnik offered his rook for three not-very-dangerous pawns in the middlegame: a pure positional sacrifice! To our knowledge, this particular sacrifice is unique in chess history, but we invite readers to post comparable sacrifices in the comments.
By his own admission, Kramnik was not too happy with his position leading up to the rook sacrifice. Things were certainly going Pentala Harikrishna's way, and the move 24...f5 seemed nearly winning for him. Kramnik's rejoinder 25.Rxe5!! was an utterly brilliant sacrifice. Both players were certain that objectively Black must still be better, but practically there were no longer any clear answers.
What's more, Kramnik had only been playing for a draw before. Now all three results were entirely possible. In time trouble, Harikrishna drifted, failing to find a plan. Both players were critical of 30...Bg8, 32...Re8 and 34...Rbd8. They looked like nice moves but didn't really do anything.
In general, the sense was that Black's pieces were only theoretically superior to White's pawn armada. After 37.c6, White's pawns were too far advanced, and Kramnik won in only five more moves. read more...
