The third appearance of the Austrian Rudolf Spielmann (1883-1942) in The Corner of the Immortals fits like a glove with the title of a book of his that is among the most praised in the history of chess, The art of sacrifice. He himself stressed several times that the best sacrifice is not necessarily the most correct from a scientific point of view, but rather the one that most upsets the adversary and incites him to error. Another of the great immolators of all time, Mijaíl Tal, very present in this collection, signed several that were technically incorrect -especially if we evaluate them with today’s monstrous programs, which calculate millions of moves per second-, but his rivals fell struck down after these deliveries of material because their human brains were incapable of finding the refutation.
However, there are perfect sacrifices. Like the one that finishes this wonderful game. In reality, there are two, which are part of the same idea. After the first one, very spectacular, it is essential not to lose concentration and look for the exact icing on the cake, without being fooled by mirages. Spielmann thus signed another tactical masterpiece.
