Upgrade to Chess.com Premium!  Smooth Criminal    • GM Gserper
• | May 27, 2012  One of the most famous quotes of Aron
Nimzowitsch is: "A passed pawn is a criminal which should be
kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police
surveillance, are not sufficient."  What did the famous
Grandmaster mean?  We are going to investigate the cases where a
passed pawn appears to be stopped ('police surveillance' if we
use Nimzowitsch's analogy)  since a move forward would lead to
her immediate liquidation. Yet in many cases the little soldier
does exactly that. There are many reasons for such a suicide and
today we'll discuss the particular case where a pawn gets
sacrificed to clear her square for a Knight.  As you all
probably know, the best squares for most of the pieces and
especially Knights is in the center of the board, so naturally
it is mostly central pawns that get sacrificed for this purpose.
The first example is a very famous game by the first World
Champion.  In the next game the future World Champ