Further insights on the value of a pawn, from Anand-Caruana

My previous blog, this morning, was about Anand-Caruana. I have now seen the article about this round on Chessbase, and noticed that not only did Vishy voluntarily give back a pawn, for space, so did Fabiano.

I very much doubt that I would have made that move either. I would have kept the pawn, and no doubt taken his on b5; but the problem is that then (after 28…Bb5) white plays 29 Ba4, exchanging off the white squared bishops, taking a lot of the steam out of black’s position. Fabiano’s pawn sacrifice keeps the play in the position, and when the B and Q line up on the b8-h2 diagonal, the fact that black has his white squared bishop can then enable B*Nf1.

Very insightful; two sacrifices I wouldn’t have considered.

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