The Positional Pawn Sacrifice
In a fashion similar to the phenomena of early flank attacks and exchange sacrifices, the frequency of positional pawn sacrifices has increased almost beyond belief. Kasparov talks about the new attitude towards material among younger players, a movement that he claims to be a leader of. Indeed he consistently enters into pawn sacrifices in positions where the compensation would have previously been regarded as insufficient or too abstract; and many, many leading masters (including older ones!) seem to have changed along with him. Grandmasters are finding positions of all types in which they are willing to invest a pawn for long-term compensation, sacrifices that would have seemed too long-term just 30-40 years ago. This is one of the most obvious trends that one will run into as one compares eras. One will also find a great increase in pawn sacrifices that lead directly to attacks, but those are readily understandable and not so much in the realm of strategy, so I won't be examining them here.
In a recent interview Spassky answers a question as to what the differences are between the chess of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s from that of today. He says "Nowadays the dynamic element is more important in chess - players more often sacrifice material to obtain dynamic compensation. Of course, such players were in my generation too and they existed before (for example, Alekhine), but then fewer people played like that than now." In my opinion, players in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were already playing much more dynamically than in the 1900-1930 period, and it was indeed Alekhine who began to break down barriers with respect to material imbalance. Probably that movement slowed (but didn't stop) during the 1950s under the influence of Botvinnik and Smyslov; and developed more rapidly during the next few decades. But one didn't see the almost routine positional pawn sacrifice take over until recent times.
I believe that this is an extremely important subject for understanding modern chess, but it is almost impossible to illustrate sufficiently, since the instantiations are so varying and ubiquitous. I will therefore show a set of pawn sacrifices, mostly unspectacular, that caught my eye in the course of gathering material recently. While various modern openings involve early positional pawn sacrifices (e.g., the Benko Gambit, which I discuss in SOMCS), I will concentrate mainly upon middlegame positions. I will also discuss a type of opening complex that was considered rather dull but has been enlivened in modern times by long-term sacrifices. The reader is strongly encouraged to look for further examples, which he will find in abundance just by playing through random master games. If you have ChessBase, one can facilitate this task by using the search mask and the 'Material' theme key.
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