the greek gift

No, this is not a history lecture. This is a chess lesson.

Have you ever come across a position like this before? In this position white’s bishop is looking at the h7 pawn and white’s queen and knight are ready jump into action in the unlikely case that black allows us to take the pawn for free. What do you think white should play in this situation to gain the upper hand?

If you guessed sacrifice the bishop you are correct as after black takes the best move for the king is to move out of his castle and the worst moves are to move vertically up or down as the queen has a mate in 2. In every other case white is winning and wins almost 99% of the time. It is very rare for black to be able to escape checkmate. There are tons of variations but this one will work on the easiest of opponents.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/409cba_61e4726e57264d29907dd847f60ff276/360p/mp4/file.mp4