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The Sacrifice He Could Not Calculate

Lev Polugaevsky vs Rashid Nezhmetdinov, 18th RSFSR Championship, Sochi 1958 · Old Indian Defence · 0-1

Coach

Nezhmetdinov never became a grandmaster. He was a master from Kazan, a long way from the centre of Soviet chess, and the collection of his best games was printed in his home city four years after he died. Polugaevsky was the coming man, on his way to being one of the strongest players in the world and one of its great opening theorists. Here he chooses a sensible plan, gets exactly the position he was playing for, and is then handed a queen he cannot refuse. What makes the game worth replaying is the note Nezhmetdinov wrote about that moment twenty years later. He had seen the sacrifice five moves before he played it, he could not work the variations out at the board, and he says it was that, having to trust it rather than check it, that made it so hard to decide on.

Before move one

Step through the game; it stops where a move is worth finding.

···

Arrow keys step through the game. Explore tries your own moves; Stockfish answers.

  • Keep an eye on the white knight that reaches d5. For ten moves it is the best piece on the board and the whole justification for White's play, and the move that unlocks Black's attack deliberately lets it fork queen and rook.
  • Black attacks with a queen and a pawn for a long stretch. At move eighteen, count how many black pieces are actually helping, and you will see why Seirawan stops there to ask what Black is playing for.
  • Read the note to Black's twelfth move before judging anything after it. Nezhmetdinov shows the line that looks like an easy win, then White's queen sacrifice that refutes it, and that is why the game took the road it did.
  • From move twenty-four onward Black is running on judgement. Nezhmetdinov says plainly that he could not calculate it and played it because he could see it.
  • The finish is a king hunt from one corner of the board to the other, and it turns twice on quiet moves rather than checks.
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