Today, I pulled off my first successful Greek gift sacrifice! The Greek gift sacrifice is a tactical theme when the opponent has castled kingside. The bishop captures the pawn on h7 with check, sacrificing itself, but often with some sort of tactical advantage in forcing the king to respond, and/or through weakening the defense of the king. In this specific game, the bishop sacrifice revealed a discovered attack on the opponent’s queen.
One of the strengths from the Vienna Gambit as an opening, especially when the opponent doesn’t play accurately, is that you can be substantially ahead on development, with open lines that supports aggressive tactics. The Greek gift sacrifice in this game was in the context that I simply had more pieces developed, and hence, more options in terms of where to move my pieces.
I hope you found this video interesting, and thanks for watching!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/38618649953
[Event "Live Chess"] [Site "Chess.com"] [Date "2022.02.14"] [Round "?"] [White "vitualis"] [Black "FredericoM"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "C28"] [WhiteElo "1317"] [BlackElo "1296"] [TimeControl "1800"] [EndTime "15:14:06 PST"] [Termination "vitualis won by resignation"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. f4 d6 4. Nf3 exf4 5. d4 Be7 6. Bxf4 O-O 7. e5 dxe5 8. dxe5 Nh5 9. Be3 Re8 10. Bd3 Bf6 11. O-O Bxe5 12. Nxe5 Rxe5 13. Bxh7+ Kxh7 14. Qxd8 Nc6 15. Qd3+ g6 16. Rxf7+ Kg8 17. Qxg6+ 1-0
