The Greek Gift
also known as: Classical Bishop Sacrifice · Bxh7+
Named after
Named for the Trojan Horse — timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, "beware of Greeks bearing gifts": the bishop on h7 is a present the king should never accept, and usually must.
Origin
The oldest analyzed sacrifice in chess: Gioachino Greco set down the model attack in his manuscripts around 1620, and the assessment machinery around it has been refined for four hundred years since.
The story
Four centuries ago, a Calabrian professional who made his living playing through the courts of Europe wrote down chess's first great attacking formula: sacrifice the bishop on h7, follow with knight to g5 and queen to h5, and the castled king's position collapses like the walls of Troy. Greco's manuscript games — possibly constructed, possibly real, nobody knows — spread the pattern across Europe, and it has since become the most deeply mapped sacrifice in the game: whole book chapters catalogue exactly when it works (queen's path to h5 open, knight ready on f3, no defender able to reach f6 or h7 in time) and when it is merely a bishop thrown away. Vukovic's "Art of Attack" devotes its most famous chapter to the conditions. It is every attacking player's first sacrifice and every French Defense player's inherited nightmare — the eternal tax on the move ...O-O played one tempo too early.
Why it matters
The archetypal attacking sacrifice: material converted into time and open lines against the king. Its acceptance conditions are the first "sacrifice checklist" most players ever learn, and the threat of it shapes opening theory — entire move orders exist just to keep Bxh7+ unsound.
Notable games
- Greco's model attack, c. 1620
- Edgard Colle's career of Bxh7 wins, 1920s
- Every French and Colle-System primer since