Learning How to Make Good Sacs

I notice many advanced players are adept at making creative sacs and going on to win. This is something I would like to learn eventually. Are there specific books that teach this, or does it just take time and experience?

Sacrifice if you get an overwhelming positional advantage; sacrifice against the king when you have more pieces in that area than the opponent.

Rethinking the Chess Pieces: about how the pieces actually function and how to make good trades and how tade into favorable imbalances.

Your Kindom for My Horse: When to exchange in chess.

Art of the Sacrifice

Understanding the Sacrifce

Positional chess Sacrifices

Playing is best to get more pattern recognition. Books by great tactical players might help. Intuition helps the process to start but it must be followed up with good calculation unless it is a positional sac.

Thanks...Perhaps reviewing some GM games as well...which are probably, in part, in the books mentioned in this thread. I now have enough books on my to-read list to last me a few lifetimes...just a matter of prioritizing at this point...I imagine it may be a while (and several books) before I read a book specializing on sacs, but being able to make great sacs seems like it would give me some kind of gratification.

The Art of Sacrifice in Chess by Rudolf Spielmann has been recommended by IM Silman.

Pattern recognition, and the fortitiude to play the sac.

Good advice.  One of the worst things i see when it comes to improvement, is people being more worried about there rating then just pulling the trigger and going for it.  As long as you are more concerned about the rating, improvement will come much slower.

I like parts of Art of Attack by Vukovic; especially the parts about building up the "preconditions" for an attack. Also Sacrifice and Initiative by Sokolov is interesting on the subject. 

But what I found best was:

1. Trying it out in your own games, seeing what works and what doesn't
2. Going over books about when it is appropiate to attack or not: Silman, Dvoretsky, Aagaard, etc. 
3. *Most Important*-Increase your general tactical, creative, and visualization abilities (through studying studies, puzzles, etc.)
4. Going over a good "best of" book written by the actual player. Anand's best games is my favorite of such books. Fire on Board by Shirov and the Sorcerer's Apprentice and/or Zurich 1953 by Bronstein are good for this as well.

Also I'm working on a blog about this exact subject: http://www.chess.com/blog/CraiggoryC/balance-out-your-chess-part-3-to-attack-or-not-to-attack come check it out if you have time.

Hope this helps!

I have but completely forgot about sacrifice and Initiative.

Other than advice already given.

When I see a tactic or sacrifice that's really surprising, I save the position and I'll take it out and look at it maybe once a week for a while. Until I can recall the ideas and variations from memory easily, and until it doesn't look so surprising anymore. Whenever something really surprised you, but also works really well, it's a great opportunity to learn something.

One way to think of it is outnumbering the opponent in a small area or set of squares (like the 2nd rank or open h file when attacking a king). If you dominate a few key points or lines, then it doesn't matter which pieces are doing it, a bishop may be just as good as a queen. And it doesn't matter how many you have left on the other side of the board. I think Vukovic talks about this when he describes focal points of an attack.

Here's a fun one, black to move and win.

Capturing twice on e3 is possible, but there will still be work to win the game after that. The solution is clearly winning by force. The solution is below.

Great suggestions so far. Thanks.

Part of my chess study includes slowly making my way through the Study Plan on this site. Right now I am on the beginner section, almost all the way through the portion on tactics. This means I have been working on the excellent Chess Mentor tactical studies by IM Silman and FM Wolski. They repeat variations on themes, and I am noticing some recurring patterns. For example, today I went through one study where I had to sac a Queen and then a Rook in order to open up two diagonals to the bad guy's King for my two Bishops (with a pawn) to mate. There were several moves involved. I did get that on the first attempt...mainly because I remembered a pattern with the Rook-sac. However, I pretty much knew that there was a mate available to me and that a sac very well might be involved. In a real game, I don't know this is necessarily the case.

I know! Like magic. Especially because I was focused on the weak pawns. My idea from the diagram was Qf6 with Rc3.

Ok, so in your variation I think the idea should still be as in the solution, bringing the rook back. So 6...Rh2 and I don't see how white can keep black off the 2nd rank (and meet the threat of Rh1).

Yeah, I'm VERY unlikely to spend time calculating this in the real game even if I saw it... I guess if I had a lot of time. But what I want is to be like stronger players, who can see the first few moves, then play it on good faith that controlling that space will mean every variation should win.

Calculate the variation to the end.

If it doesn't add up, don't sacrifice.
If it works, assuming your opponents most forcing moves, do it.
Like everything chess, it's something to practice.
You'll start recognizing the positions where a sacrifice might work.

Also, players are more likely to brag about succesful sacs than show bad sacs ;-)