A concerted action of two or more chessmen designed to achieve a specific objective, such as to gain material advantage or to win a more favorable position, or to effect a checkmate.
For a ‘Petite Combinaison’ (French names used by Capablanca), let us see the game Tartakower-Capablanca, New York 1924. Tartakower played 9.Bxb8 hoping for Rxb8 then 9. Qa4+ followed by Qxb4, but Capablanca played the subtle 9…Nxd5 threatening 10…Ne3 with a win.
For a ‘Longue Combinaison’ let us go the famous game Mason-Szymon [C50], Vienna 1st Vienna (27), 13.06.1882.
Botvinnik said: A combination is a forced variation with sacrifice.
ECHESSPEDIA
Quotes of the Day
Carlsen is paying far less attention to opening theory than his rivals, he is happy to go down paths that may offer no advantage yet have the benefit of dragging opponents out of their “openings book”. Once beyond the reaches of computer-aided openings, Carlsen starts to turn the screw.
Judith Polgar FT, 2014
Carlsen: “I ran out of steam towards the end but fortunately I played better than he did”
Magnus Carlsen 2017
FIDE is now a political organization. And being a political organization, it, of course, means that people in FIDE have some other interests – that is, to sit in their positions for the next hundred years.
Silvio Danailov 2016
Sport can make girls feel more stronger, more stable and you can fight in the future when you enter the society. It is a really good quality for a girl and I think sports are a good way to generate your personality which is really important.
Hou Yifan 2016
If I’m thinking for more than 20 minutes about one move, it’s usually a waste. Sometimes you can come up with some amazing solution but most of the time you just end up looping: you consider a move, you reject it, then you’re desperate, you come back to the move, you don’t remember why you rejected it, you have to make a move so you make it – then your opponent replies and you remember why you rejected it. The longest wait I ever did between moves was one hour and five minutes – and the move was horrible.
Magnus Carlsen 2016
