Rafael Vaganian was a tremendous player of Karpov's generation who was one of the strongest players in the world for a decade. Unfortunately, with Karpov and then Kasparov dominating the lists, he was never able to make a serious run at the world championship title, but he played lots of exciting and inspired chess in his career. The following game against Sammy Reshevsky is one of the great masterpieces in the French Defense, possibly the greatest game ever won by the black side. Reshevsky plays theoretically, but the theory of the time proves flawed as Vaganian finds a series of four utterly brilliant sacrifices to blow Reshevsky off the board.
