Queen sacrifice
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Queen sacrifice is the term used in chess when a player's queen (easily the most powerful piece) is deliberately allowed to be captured by the enemy. A queen is too valuable to sacrifice for mere positional gain, unlike a pawn, or even a knight or bishop (although there are rare exceptions — see defense perimeter for an example). Possible reasons to do this include:
- A forced checkmate after the opponent captures the Queen
- An enormous amount of material gain (say, a rook and two knights) shortly down the road
- Clearing the way for a pawn's promotion to a replacement Queen, or
- The subsequent capture of the opponent's queen, followed by some positional or material gain.
An example is given in the figure at right (White to move). Black threatens ...Qg2# (see Algebraic chess notation), and White has no way of stopping this. His only resort is a queen sacrifice:
- Qxg8+ ... Kxg8
- d8(Q)#
