In attacking, defending, exchanging and sacrificing pieces you need to know what they are worth. Any player who lets himself be tricked when exchanging will soon lose the game. The more squares of the board which a piece can control, the greater its value. The 'currency' for the material value of pieces is the pawn unit.
piece | Value (number of pawns) | |
![]() |
queen | 9 |
![]() |
rook | 5 |
![]() |
bishop | 3 |
![]() |
knight | 3 |
![]() |
pawn | 1 |
Перемещайтесь прямо по доске, чтобы ввести решение. Либо щелкните сначала на начальное поле, а затем на целевое. Или нажмите на фигуру, удерживайте ее, переместите на целевое поле и отпустите. Кнопка "Стрелка влево" возвращает ход назад.
Помощь | ![]() |
Начать сначала | ![]() |
An uneven distribution of material occurs when the total number of pawn units on both sides may be equal, but White and Black have different pieces.
Pieces | Approximate equivalent |
![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
Whenever a player accepts a loss of material in order to bring about an attack or a positional advantage we call that a sacrifice.
Sacrifices are often made when attacking the king. Pawn sacrifices allow you to rip open the opponent's king position or open up files for the attack. With piece sacrifices you can destroy the defensive wall of pawns.
When sacrificing major pieces the attacking player generally calculates the resulting variations all the way to the end. Here the end means the checkmate of the opposing king or recovering the material with an advantage.
The exchange of a rook for a bishop or a rook for a knight is called an exchange sacrifice. Exchange sacrifices and pawn sacrifices are often purely positional sacrifices. They are used to obtain a positional advantage, which may not be able to be calculated in concrete variations but which promises the player making the sacrifice a superior position for his pieces, attacking chances or a clear initiative.