Is sacrificing my Knight and my Bishop for a Rook a good thing?

It depends upon your position, which we cannot see. Yes you did make a choice.

In general, a knight and a bishop are worth more than a rook. Also, it sounds like you sacrificed two pieces with good position for a piece that wasn’t doing much. Probably a bad choice, but it all depends on what is going on with the rest of the board.

It really does depend on the position, and in the endgame I’d much rather have a rook and my king against my opponents lone king rather than having my knight, bishop and king against their lone king. In theory however that is not a great trade, not horrible, but ill-advised. Also, if you were playing for points then you would be down by one because generally both the knight and bishop are each worth three points a piece, while the rook is worth five points.

I meant that the other persons watching said I made a bad choice.

Early in the game, with a generally cluttered board, the bishop and knight are worth more than they are later in the game, when the rooks can be very dominant. At almost any time in the game a one-for-one swap (a bishop for a rook or a knight for a rook) is generally beneficial to the one who gets to take the rook.

However, at almost no time in the game (unless very late, when most of the pawns have been cleared and the rooks are so valuable) is a rook worth a bishop and a knight. That’s a tough trade-off to justify.

Finally, though, it all depends on how that game in front of you is played. If you can make that sacrifice, and by doing so put the king into a trap position that leads to checkmate or, failing that, a worse trade-off for the opponent (like losing his queen, for example, because of a fork or forced block with the queen), then it’s worth it if it can put you into a winning position.

Any sacrifice is worthwhile if it leads to a win (or saves you from losing, if the game was going badly against you). No one can say “always” or “never” about most games. (Can’t even say “no one”, actually.)

@Eggie As others have noted, what is and isn’t a good trade depends on the position on the board. Sacrificing a queen is good if it leads to a forced checkmate in the next few moves. But to flesh out what @Paradox25 indicated, the pieces generally are valued as follows:
Pawn = 1
Knight = 3 pawns
Bishop = 3 pawns
Rook = 5 pawns
Queen = 9 pawns

So giving up a knight and bishop for one rook is a net loss of a pawn.

Did you win?

No

Ah, then it was probably a bad move. But hard to tell. Do you have the game recorded? You can post the game and we can let you know.

@Eggie another way to look at it is how many moves you’ve made with a piece. If you move a piece a bunch of times and exchange it for one of my pieces that I’ve moved very little, the point values might be equivalent, but now I’m ahead on momentum, e.g. exchanging your 5-move knight for my 1-move knight means that I’m effectively ahead by 4 moves of development.

Consider your situation: taking a castled rook next to a king. Together the king and rook made 1 move. You must have made several moves with both your knight and bishop to be in a position to take that rook. After the exchange you were down by 1 point, but also behind by several moves and that’s probably a bigger problem.

(I’m talking about the early part of the game where it matters a lot more)

That’s an interesting observation, @phaedryx, but I think it’s ultimately a false reliance on the value of “sunk cost”. In economics, it’s the idea that because you have put “so much” (time, money, attention, whatever scarce resource you want to name) into a thing that it has thereby acquired more value. It’s just not so in economics, or in chess, either.

If you buy two hard-to-get concert tickets and pay a premium to get them months in advance, and then the day of the concert comes and you feel like hell and just don’t want to drag yourself out of bed, the only question to ask yourself is “Do I want to go to the concert or not?” ... the answer has nothing at all to do with what the tickets cost. That’s a sunk cost that has to be overlooked; your life (in the example we’re really discussing, “your chess life”) is here in front of you right now: What’s the best move now, regardless of whatever investment you’ve made in a piece.

If such a move puts you in position to win the game then it is a good move.

It depends a lot on the position of the game, which involves both material advantage and physical placement of the pieces (mostly the placements).

If the trade would allow you to win the game, make it.

If his rook was the only high-value piece that he had, then I would make that trade, since it would result in the opponent not having any valuable pieces left.

The key idea of trades: Make a trade whenever it would hurt your opponent more then it would hurt you.
Ask yourself several questions:
– How valuable is that knight and bishop to me? If he loses it, how would that affect him?
– How valuable is that rook to my opponent? How would their loss affect me? Is there anything else I could use them for?
– Is there any other move that I could make that is more important?

If the rook is more valuable to your opponent than the knight and bishop are to yourself, then it could be a smart move. If you are already, losing, however, it could be a bad move.

@CWOTUS here’s a simplified example:

1. e4 Nb6
2. Nb3 Ne5
3. Ng3 Nxg3
4. Qxg3

Isn’t black essentially a few moves behind even though the points are the same?

I stand behind the existence of the sunk-cost fallacy.

Chess is a perfect-information abstract strategy game. In order to make a move, I don’t have to know anything about the past history of the game. I only have to know the current locations of the pieces. So, keeping track of the number of previous moves does not change the decision that I should make.

Here is a link to the Game of the Century, where Fisher, at 13, does a queen sacrifice to go to a win. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_the_Century_(chess)

I’ll try to map that out and get back to you later, @phaedryx. I’m nowhere near proficient enough to follow a chess game just from the notation; I have to see it, and in order for me to see that I need to plot it on a real or at least drawn board.

I like the Immortal Game, where Adolf Anderssen wins by sacrificing both rooks, a bishop, and his queen.