A clearance sacrifice is a tactical maneuver in chess where a player willingly sacrifices a piece or pawn in order to clear a particular square or line for another piece’s activity. The sacrificed piece is typically blocking the path of a more valuable piece or preventing a tactical sequence from unfolding.
Clearance sacrifices are often used to create open lines for a rook, queen, or bishop, to expose the opponent’s king to an attack, or to remove a defender of a critical square. By sacrificing a piece, the player aims to gain a positional or tactical advantage that compensates for the material loss.
Let’s take a look at two examples:
Tower voice: Flight 2-0-9’er, you are cleared for take-off.
Clarence Oveur: Roger!
Roger Murdock: Huh?
Tower voice: L.A. departure frequency, 123 point 9’er.
Clarence Oveur: Roger!
Roger Murdock: Huh?
Victor Basta: Request vector, over.
Clarence Oveur: What?
Tower voice: Flight 2-0-9’er cleared for vector 324.
Roger Murdock: We have clearance, Clarence.
Clarence Oveur: Roger, Roger. What’s our vector, Victor?
Tower voice: Tower’s radio clearance, over!
Clarence Oveur: That’s Clarence Oveur. Over.
Tower voice: Over.
Clarence Oveur: Roger.
Roger Murdock: Huh?
Tower voice: Roger, over!
Roger Murdock: What?
Clarence Oveur: Huh?
Victor Basta: Who?
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist. 😀)