Double piece sacrifice – exploiting the diagonal

Jiganchine – Chang He Li, 2008

  White to move

Playing in this year’s Keres against the young talent Change He Li - surely reminded me of a combination that I had overlooked against him about a year before that. I played 13. Bf2, and won that game in a long endgame. Shortly after playing this move - I noticed the winning Nxe6 shot:

13. Nxe6!! fxe6 14. Nxd5

14… exd5 15. Bxd5+ Kh8 16. Bxa8 +-

White has a rook and 3 pawns for a piece, and his pawns in the center are very active. This was one of the cases where during the game to avoid distraction - you don’t want to look back and wonder what would have happened if you had played a better move.