I've read a few books recently, and many of them mention moves where good players sacrifice their queens for positions that lead to wins. But what the hell? I would never have the balls to ever sacrifice my queen unless I saw mate within a couple of moves.

So it'd be cool to see some of your games/analysis where you do this.

wasnt me but a good example
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008361

Not by me, of course:
The Qg7 game by Ivanchuk comes to mind: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1060750
Also Kotov's famous queen sacrifice against Averbakh in the 1953 candidates tournament: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1084375

OT, but black is supposed to be doing ok in Ivanchuk's Qg7 line these days, right?

I read in Fire on Board that Ivanchuk came up with it OTB. Such a genius.

Kotov's game is obviously awesome but he didn't risk much because it wasn't hard to calculate for him that he always would have a perpetual in hand.

Ivanchuk's Qg7 is riskier, i would definitely have thought he prepared that at home.

Bottom line: even for grandmasters, it's very rare that they speculatively sac their queen without getting at least R+K or similar compensation. For games where a Q sac leads to longterm compensation, you might look up Bronstein's famous one from the Sämisch KID.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1111459

Lev Polugaevsky vs Rashid Gibiatovich Nezhmetdinov

No examples of my own, but outside of the famous game Ivanchuk - Shirov, 1996, the other famous/outstanding example historically that hasn't been mentioned already occurred in Levitsky - Marshall, 1912: see http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1094915

Black's move

For those who don't know, fischer was only 13 when he played this game

That game inspired me to take up the Grunfeld years ago .

This is kind of a mediocre example because it was blitz and simple smothered mate. I do like how there is no pawn on h7 though.

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. Bd3 c5 6. c3 cxd4 7. cxd4 Nc6 8.
Ne2 Qb6 9. Nf3 Bb4+ 10. Bd2 Bxd2+ 11. Qxd2 O-O 12. O-O f6 13. exf6 Nxf6 14.
Rad1 Bd7 15. Bb1 Be8 16. Nf4 Bd7 17. Rfe1 Rae8 18. Ng5 e5 19. dxe5 Nxe5 20.
Nxd5 Nxd5 21. Qxd5+ Kh8 22. Rd2 h6 23. Rxe5 Bc6 24. Rxe8 Rxe8 25. Nf7+ Kg8
26. Nxh6+ Kh8 27. Qg8+ {Black resigns} 1-0

Trite! [ Okay, you did say it was a mediocre idea and in blitz! ]

An inaccurate opening idea for Black: why should he be so eager to trade off his dark square bishop without trading queens?

22. Qd4! was better than 22. Rd2? ; e.g., 22...Qc7 23. f4 Ng4 24. Rxe8 and Bxh7 looks good for White.

22...h6? was a losing blunder; better was 22...Bc6! After that blunder, it's basically over.

Still, a nice denouementl

If you like showing your historical knowledge so much, you probably know that Qe3 was winning as well right

Also, to quickfetus - me and one other guy from UTD analyzed those lines quite extensively last year and we came up with a conclusion that the Qg7 line is quite unclear, not sharing the analysis here though sorry

Also, Nezhmetdinov was a pure genius of a queen sacrifice. I have a book by Yakov Neishtadt called "Queen Sacrifice" and there are like 4 or 5 games by Nezhmetdinov there, and they are all pretty damn sick. I might post some of them later.

If the OP was asking for a game where someone gets a positional advantage after queen sac instead of a forced mate or smth, I will post several of those later too, all from that one book

There are some positional Queen sac lines for Black in the opening. Some lead to unclear positions, some are more drawing weapons, like the Catalan line underneath.
Some examples:
The previously mentioned Sämisch with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 0-0 5.f3 0-0 6.Be3 e5 7.d5 Nh5 8.Qd2 Qh4+ 9.g3 Nxg3 10.Qf2 Nxf1 11.Qxh4 Nxe3
In the Catalan: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.g3 dxc4 5.Bg2 c5 6.0-0 Nc6 7.Qa4 cxd4 8.Nxd4 Qxd4 9.Bxc6+ Bd7 10.Rd1 Qxd1+ 11.Qxd1 Bxc6
There is also a well known supposedly equalizing Queen sac line in the Rauzer with 7.-a6 8.-h6 and 9.Bf4 but i can't roll it off the top of my head. (hope i got the two lines i gave right)

Analytically, it's not a great example since Black wins on any reasonable move! Not just 1...Qg3!, but also 1...Qe3, 1...Qb2, 1...Qb4 and arguably even 1...Ne2+ wins ( leading to an ending of two rooks versus a queen ).

I'm definitely most impressed when the queen is traded for 3 minors. I know it's not quite as exciting since material equivalency exists, but the beautiful coordination that the player with the 3 minors has to show is always impressive to me. When I get home I'll try to find an example. Are there any really famous ones?

Edit - Yes, I know that 3 pieces are actually slightly better so this probably isn't something I should be so impressed by. Here's a very pretty game that shows what happens when the 3 pieces cannot be coordinated. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1091889

another brilliant queen sac here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ejXCV7rZE

[insert countless Botvinnik variation semi slav games where black plays Ne5]

The games aren't so interesting. It's a sound and pretty standard queen sac now, but the interesting thing is an anecdote that goes along with the early development of the line. When exploring the line Shirov (man he seems to show up in every opening topic I enter) approached his mentor, Botvinnik, about the queen sac. Botvinnik quickly refused to even strongly consider the variation believing there was no way it could be correct. But Shirov had already 'proven' its soundness. So it goes that this was when the namesake had finally lost touch with 'his' variation.

I apologize if I get this line wrong, but I vaguely remember seeing this in an MCO or ECO about 15 years ago. I also remember trying it in a blitz game, as black, with disastrous results.

1.e4,e6; 2.d4,d5; 3.Nc3,Nf6; 4.Bg5,Be7; 5.e5,Nfd7; 6.Be7,Qe7; 7.f4,a6; 8.Nf3,c5; 9.Bd3,O-O; 10.O-O,cd4; 11.Bh7,Kh7; 12.Ng5,Qg5; 13.fg5,dc3;

I don't remember the rest of the game, but I have memories of not getting my minor pieces out the door in time to get anywhere. My [20-year-old] opening books are hundreds of miles away. Can anyone confirm or correct the above line? Does anyone know any more about this line? If so, should the discussion be moved to another thread?

that position looks absolutely hopeless after 14. Qh5+ and 15. Rf3

I think 9...0-0 is well known to be a blunder in that line too and Bxh7+ just wins. I'm not sure what line you could be confusing this with though.

Here's another by Nez: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1260278

To be honest, I don't know how he saw it. It's not a move I'd seriously consider for more than 2 seconds. He only gets 2 pieces for the queen and some sort of attack. Black even forces white to play the attack a tempo down (or more?) by redirecting the knight to e2 first.

And now that I think about it: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=17121

This is a guy who more than once sacrificed a queen for 2 minors and a pawn out of the opening (KID). He even got Kasparov to do it once. Not that I'm suggesting you try this, but it doesn't hurt to look.

The first one you posted, by Nezhmetdinov, is one of those I wanted to post. It's just so impressive - not only the actual idea, which is obviously spectacular too, but the whole game after that sac is just fantastic. In that book I mentioned before, the author talks about it quite a lot, and says that Nezhmetdinov did not prepare it at home - apparantly he pondered for over an hour in that well-known position and then just stunned his opponent and the spectators with that sacrifice. It has to be mentioned that his opponent managed to gather himself and responded with the best move, Ne2+. If he would just automatically take exf he would have lost even quicker!

The first one by Nezhmetdinov is definitely incredible. Unfortunately, I read the posts by users at the site the game is hosted on and I'm now permatilted.

I'm surprised that none of you ever sacrificed your Queen. I recently read a book called Game of Kings, which follows a famous high school chess team, and two of the top players (2400+) sacrificed their queens a couple of times. The author nonchalantly would be like "And X sacrificed his queen and won quickly," so I guess I figured good players must do this somewhat regularly (even though it really surprised me).

Also, it seems that black players tend to sacrifice their queens more often than white players.

Queen sacs are actually very uncommon. Even when part of a mating attack, it's more often a lesser piece that is thrown away since the queen controls many squares which tends to help more with the mating.

Queens are valuable pieces. To sacrifice one and not lose, you need to get that much compensation. You can get some by getting some material back, but you're still looking for a good deal of positional compensation here.

Look, we still get excited when someone sacrifices the exchange (worth roughly 2 pawns, though often the player will get 1 pawn for the exchange), so finding that much value in positional trumps is hard enough. Finding enough to make up for your queen? That takes an extraordinary position.

Your OP specifically asked about sacrificing for "positions that lead to wins" but you apparently didn't want forced mating combinations. If we can include all queen sacs that lead to forced mate and all queen sacs that lead to a forced win of more material, then I could probably find 4 or 5 tournament games out of my last 200-300. This is almost certainly not unusual. Oh and then probably another 4 or 5 if you count games where my queen is en prise but cannot be taken due to mating attacks, etc.