Hi again! Today we take a look at Alexander Kotov's masterpiece played in Round 14 of the Zürich International Chess Tournament, 1953. Kotov took the entirety of his time on the clock thinking about an unsure sacrifice before playing it in style! This type of long-term advantage sacrifice where the player sacrificing a piece doesn't get compensated with checkmate or an abundance of material is rare in chess.
In the tournament, although this did not win the brilliancy prize, it was nominated and in David Bronstein's opinion (in the book) this game should've definitely won the Brilliancy Prize.
Kotov demonstrates core belief in his position in a brave fashion which is the beautiful side of chess we, as the audience, almost never see in bright light.
Kotov's game here was played in the Zürich International Chess Tournament of all time rumored and argued to be the best chess tournament of all time given its the amount of talent present and the multiple discoveries games in that tournament have done for the advancement of chess. Also, two of the players in that tournament have made books on it (David Bronstein and Miguel Najdorf).
I, for one, am analyzing this tournament to the fullest on my chess blog on Instagram (@thechessnerd) in which I'm now at the half-way mark: 105 games completed (Round 15 ✅) out of 210 games (Round 30).
Scarce were (and are) the tournaments that spans over 2 months long with 30 rounds that includes 15 of the 16 best chess players at the time (because it was a candidates tournament, Mikhail Botvinnik (the current world champion at the time) is waiting patiently on his thrown for a challenger (the sole winner of this tournament)) with a total of 210 games being played. UN-HEARD-OF
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