Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Trick for Drawing in the Pirc

Yasser Seirawan, in the year 1988, introduced a novelty playing the Pirc defence with black. It was in round 12 from the Chess World Cup, played in Brussels. 17 players played in that tournament.

As you probably know, a draw is a very frequent result at the top level. The World Cup 1988 was not the exception. Sometimes, according to the score, players consider playing peaceful games in order to save energy for the next rounds. Or maybe none of both players has chances to get a good position in the final ranking.

In this game, Seirawan set up a trick offering a queen sacrifice and posing implicitly a draw offer.

White was not forced to take the queen. But the game was played in round 12 and both players had small chances to achieve a good performance in the event. Because of that, they decided not to take any risk and agreed to draw their game. Seirawan finished in place 13, while Sax finished 16.