A sacrifice is when you deliberately give up material — a pawn, a piece, even the queen — to gain something worth more: checkmate, a crushing attack, a promotion, or simply winning back more than you gave. It’s the most spectacular idea in chess precisely because it looks, for a moment, like a blunder.
Sacrifices come in two flavors. A sham (or “real-in-name-only”) sacrifice is a forced calculation: you give up material knowing exactly how you’ll get it back with interest — like a queen sac that forces mate a move later. A true sacrifice is a gamble on long-term compensation — initiative, attacking chances, a wrecked enemy king — that can’t be calculated all the way to the end. Both share one rule: you’re trading material for something you value more.
The 10-second version
- A sacrifice = giving up material on purpose.
- You get something bigger in return — mate, an attack, or a larger recapture.
- Sham sacrifice = forced payoff; true sacrifice = a bet on compensation.
A quick example
This is the classic smothered mate. White throws away the queen with Qg8+!! — and Black is forced to capture, Rxg8, because the king can’t take (the knight on h6 guards g8). Now the rook has blocked the king’s last escape square, and Nf7# delivers checkmate: the king on h8 is smothered by its own rook and pawns. A queen for a mate in two — the ultimate bargain, and a textbook sham sacrifice.
Related terms
There’s no deeper page than this one yet, but you can practice the pattern on the sacrifice puzzles page, and the tactics hub covers every motif a sacrifice tends to ride on. Back to the chess glossary for more definitions. A sacrifice is usually the opening move of a combination, it’s what earns a move the brilliant label, and it often sets up a finishing fork.
Mini-FAQ
Is a sacrifice the same as just losing material? No — the difference is intent and payoff. A sacrifice is given up on purpose for something worth more. Losing material for nothing is a blunder.
What’s a “sham” sacrifice? One where the material comes back by force — you’ve calculated the exact sequence, as in a queen sac that forces checkmate. A “true” sacrifice, by contrast, bets on compensation you can’t fully calculate.
Written and fact-checked by the Chess Lab Academy Editorial Team (AI-assisted, human-edited) · Position legality-checked with python-chess · Definition verified against Wikipedia and standard references · Last verified 2026-07-13 · How we verify content.