Sharpen your razor and let your opponents grab pawns with check

Grabbing pawns does take time, remember that. And when a bishop (on h2 or h7) or a queen grabs a pawn it is possible that the piece is temporarily off-side, no longer where it is maybe needed. In some positions you can profit from that. Not always but in some positions you can.

First I will show you an epic game from the famous 1953 Zuerich tournament. This is a game that made a long lasting impression on me as a teenager when I was studying chess games. Max Euwe, former world champion chess, playing black, let the opponent, the sharp tactical attacking player Efim Geller grab a pawn on h7 with check! And after that Euwe sacrificed a full rook to put the white queen a lot more off-side.

This great and creative chess game by Max Euwe actually inspired me to play razor sharp in chess games where sacrificing a pawn with check was possible.
In fact somewhere around 1997, in the final (final as in the all or nothing) game, I became blitz champion at my chess club by sacrificing my pawn on h2 with check because I saw that my rooks could go to the 7th rank, and that the taking of the h2 would temporarily cause a slight disharmony with the black pieces. After the game my opponent, who was actually a chess friend whom I played countless casual blitz games with at home and at the chess club was furious and in disbelief. Later that night at the bar I heard my opponent going on and on about it to anyone who wanted to hear : "He let me take the h2 pawn with check!".

You see : To play creative chess one sometimes needs to do away with dogmatic thinking.
Now I will be the first to say that in my chess games there's a lot of dogmatic auto-pilot thinking and moves but I hope you do get the idea.

Now a fresh game of today with annotations where I could let my opponent grab a pawn with check :

And also the full game with Lichess Stockfish analysis (1 0 game, 2/0/0, 21 acpl)

Key take away :

1. Sometimes it is totally fine to give up pawns with check. It is your compensation that matters.
2. Remember that a lone bishop and one or two pawns can, at times, be an unbelievable good defender in such cases.

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