In Part 1 of Chess Tactics: Attacking castled King with the classic Bishop sacrifice, we looked at the main variation of the bishop sacrifice in Part 2 we will look at some of the possible variations.
Variation #1 – Capturing the Knight by dark squared black Bishop
| 7. | Bxh7+ | Kxh7 |
| 8. | Ng5+ | Bxg5 |
| 9. | hxg5+ | Kg6 |
| 10. | Qh5+ | Kf5 |
| 11. | Qh3+ | Kg6 |
| 12. | Qh7# | 1 – 0 |
Variation #2 – Moving the King to h6
| 7. | Bxh7+ | Kxh7 | |
| 8. | Ng5+ | Kh6 | |
| 9. | Nxe6+ | …. | Here the black Queen is lost following a discovered check from Bishop at c1 |
Variation #3 – moving the king to g6
| 7. | Bxh7+ | Kxh7 | |
| 8. | Ng5+ | Kg6 | |
| 9. | h5+ | Kh6 | |
| 10. | Nxe6+ | …. | Discovered check and threat on black Queen |
Variation #4 – moving the king to f5 after g6
| 7. | Bxh7+ | Kxh7 |
| 8. | Ng5+ | Kg6 |
| 9. | h5+ | Kf5 |
| 10. | g4# | 1 – 0 |
All the variations lead to one conclusion – victory to white led by the sacrifice of the light-squared bishop at h7. The attacking prowess of the bishop is unleashed at its entirety in the attacking of the castled king.
Ironically, the Greco’s sacrifice of the classic bishop sacrifice, which was recorded as early as 1619 in Greco’s handbook, was systematically reviewed and in 1911 by E. Vollemy. Since then, this classic bishop sacrifice is occasionally used as an attacking option, especially by the player playing white pieces.
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