Clearance Sacrifice

A clearance sacrifice occurs when the attacker deliberately sacrifices material in order to “clear the way” for one of his pieces. This can mean freeing a diagonal, a file, a rank, or a square so that a piece can make use of it for attacking purposes. Here are some examples.

Hess(2445) - Ivanov(2554)

10^th Foxwoods Open, 2008

White to move, Intermediate puzzle from KEBU Chess Tactics Software 2009

Black’s king position is very exposed and if the d4-pawn was magically removed from the board Bc3+ would be decisive for White. Thus, White sacrifices the pawn with tempo, clearing the necessary diagonal for his bishop. 30.d5! Qxd5 and now 31.Bc3+ Kh6 32.Rxf8 would win a full piece, but White found an even more accurate move first. 31.Rf7+! Black resigned.  31…Qxf7 32.Bc3+. The bishop reaches the coveted diagonal and White wins a queen in the process.

Here’s a more somewhat trickier example:

Shishkin(2510) – Pavlov(2418)

6^th V. Nabokov Memorial, 2008

Here Black cleared the way for his dark-squared bishop (while simultaneously defending against Qxg7#) with 27...Re7!! And White resigned. He will be mated after 28.Qxe7 Bc3+ 29.Bd2 Bxd2+ 30.Kd1 Be3+ 31.Ke1 Qd2+ 33.Kf1 Qxf2#.

These examples were taken from games played very recently (last year) directly from KEBU Chess Tactics Software. You can download a free version here for more puzzles like these.