Exchange sacrifices in practice of Petrosian
The positional exchange sacrifice became a trademark of the 9th World Champion. In many of his games Petrosian successfully implemented such sacrifices, proving that long-term strategic needs of the position can often change the traditional value of pieces. As a result, thanks to Petrosian's efforts the positional exchange sacrifice was taken to a new level of understanding, and it has become an integral part of chess strategy in our days.
The video in this chapter begins with a fragment of a game from the 1946 Soviet Junior Championship, in which the young Tigran decided to exchange his rook for his opponent's bishop and a pawn to gain important strategic advantages. The numerous further examples in the video show how well Petrosian perfected the positional exchange sacrifice during his outstanding career. The last example is from the 1983 Soviet Championship, just a year before the death of the 9th World Champion.
| Dunaev,V | 0–1 | Petrosian,T | |||||||||||||||||
 | URS U18-ch Final | GM |  | ||||||||||||||||