Exchange Sacrifice
Exchange sacrifice is, along with pawn sacrifice, one of the most common positional sacrifices. There are many classical examples, Petrosian and Simagin were using this motif quite often, but I want to start this topic with the game that had huge impact on my thinking process.
Garry Kasparov - Alexey Shirov
Horgen, 1994
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.Ndb5 d6 7.Bf4 e5 8.Bg5 a6 9.Na3 b5 10.Nd5 Be7 11.Bxf6 Bxf6 12.c3 Bb7 13.Nc2 Nb8 14.a4 bxa4 15.Rxa4 Nd7 16.Rb4 Nc5
17. Rxb7!
I remember I thought this was print error in the newspaper. Exchange sacrifice will cause serious transformation. Two of the black’s most active pieces, Bb7 and Nc5, will be neutralized. Dark-squared bishop is staying out of game and white knights are dominating the board. White will have long-term positional advantage.
