Sacrifice

A sacrifice is the intentional decision to offer or give up material, meaning pawns or pieces, in order to obtain something considered more valuable. The return may be checkmate, leaving the attacked king with no legal answer; a later gain of greater material; open paths for rooks, bishops, or the queen; an exposed king; renewed initiative, the ability to make the opponent respond; getting a pawn to the far end of the board so it becomes another piece; or even a mechanism that forces a draw, a game with no winner.

The opponent is not always required to accept. Calculating a sacrifice therefore includes the capture, refusal, and any intermediate reply. The label also does not prove that the move is correct: a sacrifice can be sound, risky, or simply inadequate. Its value depends on whether the compensation, the benefit received for the material, is real and usable.

Common forms

• In a sham sacrifice, the loss is temporary because a forced sequence recovers what was offered or decides the game.
• In common modern usage, a positional sacrifice leaves the investment in place and receives activity, a favorable pawn arrangement, or lasting control.
• In an exchange sacrifice, a rook is specifically given for a bishop or knight.
• Other names describe the mechanism, such as clearing a path or deflecting a defender.

Many sacrifices begin a combination, a calculated sequence of connected moves, but not all lead to a completely forced sequence. The less concrete the return is, the more important it becomes to test whether the opponent can exchange pieces to reduce the danger, defend, or return some material under favorable conditions.