Greek Gift

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kurtgodden

OK, here's one of my recent games.  It's the first time I ever tried the Greek Gift, and it worked for me.  There were 3 sacrifices in here, a knight to deflect the bishop from the key diagonal, the classic bishop sac, of course, and then a rook sac to get a key pawn moved.  You might want to end up choosing a different game or position, especially since my opponent didn't make the "traditional" king move back behind the pawns.  He took the other route and moved the king out, but Vukovic also covers that response too.  In any case before I get too chatty, here's the game.  The fun begins with move 10 by white.

kurtgodden

I should have added that there may well be better continuations than what I actually played in this game.  I did not consult Vukovich or any other sources during the game.  I was just winging it. I just wanted to post this to get the discussion started.  I'm sure a better position can be found for illustration.

Thijs

It's a nice game, but black may have been a bit too cooperative there. In the game it turned out well, but it's not clear that your sacrifices were all good. For starters, black could have played 13... Qxg5 with a B+N+N vs. Q+P+P position. Maybe white's better, maybe he's not.

It's a nice game, and the idea to sacrifice on d6 is nice, to play Bxh7, but you need to be absolutely sure this is the best if you're going to tell the users that not playing Nb5 is bad.

And if white doesn't play 9. Nb5 but Bd2, and the black computer continues with 9... f6, then the whole point of playing it out is lost. Then you're just playing against the computer in a (probably equal) position.

camembert

The simplest case where the Greek gift is correct that I know of is this one. It's easy to imagine the position might arise in a game after the moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.Nf3 Bb4 6.Bd3 O-O (in fact, I added this same example to the Wikipedia a few years ago).

Perhaps it would be an idea to have a quite simple example like this one, and also something more complicated? There are some good examples in Vukovic's "Art of Attack" which I'll dig out later if nobody else does first.

kurtgodden

Here is the standard position for the Greek Gift given in Vukovich's classic book "The Art of Attack in Chess."  He devotes a whole chapter to this, which he calls the classic bishop sacrifice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second variation is 2...Kh6, but the White has a discovered check with Nxe6+, and wins the Black queen on the next move.

The 3rd variation that Vukovich presents is this:

DavidForthoffer

Also remember to include not-quite-correct positions, such as where the Black Bishop can reach f5 after Qh5, or where Black can defend with R(f8)-e8 and the best White can do is get perpetual check.

kurtgodden

Erik,

You need to pretty much listen to David Forthoffer. After all, look at his credentials...!   Cool

Ibracadabra1

i like the gift already ;-)