Chess

Here's a nice endgame from the world junior championship in Poland. After 30 moves of the game Henni-Kacheishvili, Black's better bishop clearly gave him a big advantage, but after 31.g3 Bc1 32.Kd1, forcing a win is not so easy: 32...Bxa3 33.Kc2 leaves the bishop incarcerated on a3.

Instead, Kacheishvili found a nice plan: 32...Bh6 33.Ke2 Kf5 34.Kd3 g5! 35.Ke2 (35.hxg5 fxg5 will result in Black's creating a powerful passed h-pawn) 35...g4! 36.f4 Bxf4! (The point of his play. Instead 36...Ke4? 37.Bd2 gets nowhere.) 37.gxf4 Kxf4 38.Kf2 f5 39.Bd2+ Ke4 40.Kg3 Kd3 41.Bc1 Kc2 42.Be3 Kb2 and White resigned. Black plays Kxa3 next move and the a-pawn wins the game. The moral is clear: if your good bishop can't beat a bad one in a symmetric position, try sacrificing it to create imbalance. The bad bishop may look even worse when there is no opposition around.