Hanging Piece vs. Unsound Sacrifice

[drahacikfm]

There are a lot of problems with low ratings in which you take a hanging piece on the first move, and the problem is over.  These problems fall into two types:

1) You take the piece and there is nothing more to think about.

2) You take the piece and the opponent has a strong move, such as pushing a pawn to the seventh rank, or a seemingly unstoppable mate threat.  Ideally you should have thought of your answer to that strong move before taking the piece.  It may have required a lot of thought and/or finding some brilliant moves.

In that second case, the opponent probably intentionally left the piece hanging, because he thought his next move would win.  For these cases I suggest the new tag "Unsound Sacrifice", to distinguish from stupid blunders which just hang a piece.

Also for the second case it would be nice if the problems don't end after one move, but require you to find the correct answer to the opponent's strong move.  That's one area where the pruning algorithm could be improved.

[richard]

That sounds like a reasonable suggestion, I'm a little concerned that it will be a source of miss-tagging by some (mainly using hanging piece even though it fits under "Unsound Sacrifice"), but I agree that it is an important distinction so I'll probably add it in.

Regards,
Richard.