The desperado: a piece with nothing left to lose
Once a piece cannot be saved, its value changes. It is no longer worth three points to you, it is worth whatever it can take on the way out.
- Trigger a piece with no square that saves it
- Aim the most expensive capture available
- Bonus a capture that also gives check
The word covers two situations that feel different and are the same idea. In the first, a piece is trapped: it has no safe square and nothing can rescue it, so it grabs whatever it can and dies expensively. In the second, a sequence of captures is under way in which one of your pieces is certain to come off, so it takes something extra before the sequence catches up with it.
The mental move is the hard part. You have to stop counting the doomed piece as yours. Once it is written off, a capture that looks like throwing a bishop away is really collecting a pawn for free.
A bishop takes a pawn and finds the door shut
White has just taken the a7 pawn with the bishop and Black has answered with b6. Those green dots are every legal move the bishop has left: exactly two, and both of them lose it. b8 runs into the knight on d7 and the rook on c8, and b6 is defended twice, by the c7 pawn and by the same knight.
This is the moment the word is for. The bishop is lost. Retreating is not on the menu and defending it is not possible, so the only question left is what it can take with it.
So it takes something on the way out
The whole thing from the start. White is greedy, Black builds the wall, White sells the bishop for what it can get.
15.Bxa7 b6 16.Bxb6 cxb6
A bishop for two pawns, and Black's queenside pawns are now a mess with a rook already sitting on the half-open c-file. Without the desperado it would have been a bishop for one pawn and no compensation at all. That is the whole trick: the second pawn is free, because the bishop was never coming home.
Note what the desperado is not. It is not a rescue and it does not make Bxa7 a good move. White is still worse than before the whole adventure started. Playing the best move in a bad position is a separate skill from not reaching bad positions, and this is the first one.
The other kind: both pieces are doomed
The version you will meet more often in real games happens inside a capture sequence. Your knight is attacked and cannot move because something bigger is hanging elsewhere, or two of your pieces are under attack at once and only one can be saved. Whichever piece is certain to be lost should not just sit there waiting: it should capture a pawn, or check, or take a defender, first.
The same logic runs in reverse when your opponent's piece is the doomed one. Before you spend a move capturing something that cannot escape, check what it can eat while you are busy. This is where desperados actually cost people games, and it pairs with trapped pieces and hanging pieces as one habit: before every capture, ask what is loose on your side of the board. See also en prise.
- Ask it whenever a piece of yours is trapped: what is the most expensive thing it can reach?
- Prefer captures with check. A check chooses your opponent's reply for you.
- Two pawns and a wrecked structure is a normal desperado result. It is not a swindle, it is damage control.
- When your opponent has a trapped piece, look at what it can take before you take it.
Questions people ask
What is a desperado in chess?
A piece that is going to be captured no matter what, played as aggressively as possible before it goes. Instead of leaving it to be taken for nothing, you use it to capture the most valuable thing it can reach, or to give a check that gains a move. The value of a doomed piece is whatever it can collect, not what it is worth on paper.
Why would you give a bishop up for a pawn?
You would not, unless the bishop was already lost. That is the whole point of a desperado: the comparison is not bishop against pawn, it is one pawn against nothing. If your piece has no legal square that saves it, every capture it makes on the way out is a free gain.
How do I spot a desperado in my own games?
Two triggers. When a piece of yours is attacked and you notice it has no safe square, stop looking for an escape and start looking at what it can take. And in any long sequence of captures, work out which of your pieces is coming off regardless, then see whether it can take something on a different square first.
Related
Desperado sits under Words you hear at the board in the reference. Nearby: