Customer Reviews

The Art of Sacrifice in Chess: A Great Master of Brilliant Combinations Shows You How to Win Games by Giving Up Material

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4 star:		(6)
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Rudolph Spielmann's book is a fascinating insight into the thinking that inspires successful attacking play. Spielmann, an Austrian master, was considered of the most ferocious attackers of his days in the 1920's. His style of play is strikingly similar to the celebrated Mikhail Tal. If Alexei Shirov is today considered the descendant of Tal, then Spielmann should be considered his forerunner. Spielmann's philosophy was total distain of material in pursuit of the greater goal of mating the king. His book gives numerous examples of his play and would recommend this book to anyone who loves Tal. The book contains complete games played by Spielmann against some of the leading players of his time and is grouped into thematic chapters. The only slight drawback is the book is in the descriptive notation but this a small price to pay for this frank and personal insight into the mind of an attacking genius.

This is a classic! Speilmann presents numerous sacrifices by theme and gives agreat examples. This book has stood the test of time and is still worthwhile to get. Perfect books to compliment this are "Art of Attack in Chess" and "Winning Chess Traps: Tactics in the Opening". All three of these books will give you exactly what you need to be fully covered when it comes to fully understanding everything to do with Attacking Chess and Sacrificing!

Rudolf Spielmann's work is not perfect, but if read in the right frame-of-mind can be an extremely rewarding read.

This is not a manual on the mechanics of kingside attacks, in the vein of Vukovic's "Art of Attack in Chess," or Znosko-Borovsky's "The Art of Chess Combination." Neither is it a tactical workbook, such as Fred Reinfeld's works or Fred Wilson's works or, for that matter, Laszlo Polgar's magnum opus "Chess: 5,334 Problems, Combinations, and Games." Every one of those books/authors mentioned is worth reading, but this is a DIFFERENT KIND of work.

The book that readily comes to mind as being in the same "family" as this work is Tal and Damsky's "Attack with Mikhail Tal," but unlike that (masterpiece!) Spielmann's work does not require a Master's Degree in Attacking Chess! :-)

Now that I've compared "The Art of Sacrifice in Chess" to other types of attacking books you may be thinking of purchasing, let me finally speak about the book itself!

Yes, Spielmann's choice of classification and terminology may be called into question, but that does not in any way detract from the book itself. What Spielmann does in this book better than any other intermediate book I can think of, is reveal HOW THE SACRIFICE AFFECTS THE REMAINING PIECES ON THE ATTACKING AND DEFENDING SIDES! For example, one of his games begins 1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e5 Nfd7 and now Spielmann plays 4.e6!? After 4...fxe6, Spielmann brilliantly demonstrates (through his play and especially through the annotations!) how White was able to win the game by constricting the Black forces behind the e-pawns on e7,e6. The line of thinking runs: if there is a pawn on e6 (extra though it may be), the bishop on c8 cannot really come out, which in turn entombs the rook on a8! There are other similar examples of this thought process throughout the book. You will also notice how, for example, minor piece sacrifices in the center suddenly cause the attacking side's rooks and queen to spring to life with decisive force!

Many of the examples in the book are complex, but in nearly all cases you can see Spielmann's THOUGHT PROCESS, and you understand why he made the decisions he made. To me this book has a lot of value, and thank goodness it is a departure from all those insipid Morphy games with "sac, sac, mate" on f7 against an uncastled king.

Spielmann was a great combinative player from the first half of the 20th century. He played against Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker, Tarrasch, Rubinstein etc. In this fabulous book he explains the foundation of combinative play: deep positional understanding, and not necessarily calculation power. In practical play it is most of the times not possible to calculate all the ramifications of a "real sacrifice" (this is Spielmann's therminology for those sacrifices which do not yield an immediate check mate or recovery of the material sacrificed). In such cases the sacrifice is based on positional understanding, not calculation power. Tal used to play like this; Shirov comes to mind as another example. A classic book. For this price do not think twice: buy it!

This is not a book bean counters will enjoy to say the very least :)... If you like to throw caution to the wind and go for broke... This is a pretty good book to consider picking up and reading :)... It uses old descriptive notation so that might not go over well with some. Still just reading the words I found to be pretty enjoyable. I like how he talks about the Sham sac and some other things. For the price it is really worth thinking about getting with another book or order. The contents of the book are setup sorta interesting...

Part 1 deals with
The Various Types of Sacrifices

Sham Sacrifices, Positional Sacrifices, Sacrifices for gain and Mating Sacrifice... Then he gets into what he calls Real Sacrifices... They include Sacs for development, Obstructive Sacs, Preventing (or anti-castling) Sacs... Other sacs he gets into are Line-Clearance Sacs, Vacating Sacs, Deflecting or Decoy Sacs, (Castled) King's Field Sac and King-Hunt Sac...

Part II deals with Sacrificial Values :)...

This mostly consists of the Exchange Sac and the Queen Sac... A few examples are given for each of the listed type of sacs... So its pretty interesting how they break it up in the Contents page... This book is also 197 pages, so its pretty good value for the price. If this book might fit your style, I would think about picking it up...

This classic is something every chess player should read at least once. Spielmann, a great attacker and sacrificial player, shows you the thoughts, ideas, and methods of sacrifice. It's amazing how he was seemingly on the lookout for sacs at all times whether for positional or attacking gains. Great read.

This is a kind of book, after read it, you can feel how your game was developmented.

I loved this book, Great concept, there are a particular chapter i remenber, hole chapter of exchange sacrifice. Just for positional iniciative or domained strategics. Some games survive the computer analysis.

You won't regret if you buy this book, the only thing is the notation's book is not in algebraic, and some younth or beginer player will be dificult to read the games. For me is not dificult but met some people leave a book for this.

The book is great, too bad that the games are not writen in algebraic, but this will not be a issue for a player who loves chess.

After reading you will leard this: Iniciative, development pieces by sacrifices, exchange sacrifices.

Is your choice, i just want to be clear about the book. i hope i could help anyway.

I read this book after I finished "Art of Attack in Chess" and "Art of Chess Combination". Compared to those other two, this book is not that good. It's only a collection of Rudolf Spielmann's games, so the ideas and styles would be limited. He did explain a little bit on the sacrifices, but not enough on the conditions. For further information, you can read the other two books I mentioned above. And if you've read those two before, it's a great opportunity to examine how much you've understood in real complete games. Or you can try to analyse the games yourself and compare with the text moves.

Another thing I want to mention is that I cannot agree with the author on his categorization of the sacrifices. All sacrifices are sham sacrifices. Material is only one of the imbalances on the chess board (read Jeremy Silman's book). So the sacrifice we usually refer to is about material. We should always gain something from the wood we give up, such as time, space, initiative, position, lead in development and etc.

But the book is still not bad for its price, at least I enjoyed it.

It is going to take some time to assimulate what is in this book. Everything was on time and looks good. Thank you!

"A good sacrifice is one that is not necessarily sound but leaves your opponent dazed and confused." --Rudolf Spielmann


Another great quote is in the title of this review. It reminds me of Hemingway's own and wonderful Moveable Feast conversation.

One final reference before I begin my review, this a stirring description of Spielmann from Chernev and Reinfeld's classic Fireside Book of Chess:

"Rudolph Spielmann was a bald, short, pudgy, timid, good-natured man who liked a glass of good beer. Yet this quiet little man could make brilliant combinations blaze up out of the most harmless-looking positions."

This quiet little man's masterpiece is "The Art of Sacrifice in Chess." Dover's reprint offers an affordable glimpse into one of the great attacking forces of the chess world. From all accounts, his weak spot was defense. Unfortunately for Spielmann, and unlike Morphy fifty years prior, his peers realized that a well-rounded game was necessary to reach the very top.

The book's layout and presentation take some getting used to, but the content cannot be faulted. GM* Spielmann defines eleven kinds of sacrifices and provides over-the-board examples for each, many of which involve other early 20th century giants of the game (e.g., Schlechter, Tartakover, Duras, Mieses, Gruenfeld, Rubinstein, Tarrasch).

As I have said elsewhere, I will not knock a book written seventy-five years ago for having descriptive notation. And while it is possible for a publisher to incorporate revised algebraic notation into a new edition, that is not without its own perils (typos in transcribing the moves). A fairer complaint under the category of accessibility would be the curious vocabulary choices throughout the book, including but surely not limited to:

demesne/concomitant/disquisition/pusillanimity/cavil/polemics/immolates/timorous/peremptory/obviates/adduces/insuperable

As my father used to say, those are twenty-five cent words. (When I was young, I would get a quarter if I could spell difficult or exotic words.) But there should be no need for the author to try and impress; the quality of the chess should speak for itself. My guess is that these are more the work of the translator (who was French), as the book was originally published in German in 1935.

This Dover edition is billed as an unabridged and unaltered republication of a printing of a revised edition of an earlier work (phew!), but I noticed White is missing his light-squared bishop in the diagram on p.181. Also, unless spellings have changed in recent years, some final letters appear to have been dropped (divers[e] on p.101 and substantia[l] on p.117).

Allow me to close with one more quote from the Last Knight of the King's Gambit: "A game of chess is not a mathematical problem, but a contest full of life, and in a contest, the attacker, in practice, always has the advantage."

Change a dozen words, clean up the formatting, and this is an easy 5-star book.


*FIDE began awarding the title of "Grandmaster" in 1950 and included then current top players and also grandfathered in older players who had previously played top-level chess. But an oversight meant that comparably excellent players who were no longer alive, including four former World Champions, never received the official title. As for Spielmann, he died in Sweden, reportedly broke, in 1942. Nonetheless, his participation in (and shared second-place showing at) the famous San Sebastián 1912 tournament should answer any doubters. By 1913 he was in the half dozen best players in the world. [Chessmetrics, July 1913 rating list]