Compensation is a chess concept that we only fully understand when we enter the world of serious chess.
The relative value of pieces is perhaps the most difficult chess concept of all to explain.
It is one that every player must feel and believe in and can only be accepted with the help of our own practice, and when we feel it come together as though a part of us.
Why so much talk about such or similar sacrifices? Quite simply because we are afraid! We have been taught, and practice shows and proves the clear fact, that the closer we get to the last part of the game, the ending, the more pronounced a material advantage becomes.
If in the middlegame we can still hope for sudden turns, for the influence of other pieces, this is negligible in the endgame.
Maybe less so with tactical sacrifices, where we immediately see what the sacrificer gets in return.
How can we not accept the rook that the opponent offers us, when there is nothing concrete to see? One or two weaknesses perhaps, but they can be eliminated, and the material advantage and a secure victory in the endgame remains.
Georg Mohr was born in Maribor, Slovenia in 1965 becoming a Grandmaster in 1997. He joined as a member of the FIDE Trainers Commission from 2002, becoming a FIDE Senior Trainer in 2004 and a FIDE International Organizer in 2011. Georg has been a professional chess trainer for many years. He was coach and captain of Slovenian national team from 2003 – 2010 and since 2011 he has been Turkish national youth trainer. He is a chess writer and was editor of Slovenian chess magazine Šahovska Misel from 1999 and editor of Fide Trainers Commission trainers’ surveys. He is also an organiser of chess events acting as tournament director of the European Club Cup (Rogaška Slatina 2011), the World Youth Championship (Maribor 2012) and the World Senior Championship (Bled 2018). This is his third book for ‘Thinkers Publishing’.