Common sacrifice themes in attacks?

Question

What are common sacrifical themes in mating attacks? For example, the Greek Bishop Sacrifice.

Answer 1

Not exactly sure what you're after with that question, but here's something to at least open the ground a little.

The "Greek Gift" I think is more a name for a particular sacrifice than a theme. It employs a couple of themes, e.g., line clearance and decoy -- line clearance opens a hole in the castled position for other pieces to use for attacks, and decoy brings the enemy king to a square where it can more easily be attacked. Another famous sacrifice using those themes is Lasker-Bauer (Lasker's double bishop sacrifice).

There are numerous resources covering tactical themes, going back to Spielmann's "The Art of Sacrifice In Chess" but a couple of the best resources for mating themes and patterns are Renaud & Kahn's "Art Of The Checkmate" and Vukovic's "The Art of Attack in Chess" (of the two I'd prefer the latter only because it covers more than just checkmates, but all three books are well worth the time to study them).

In Vukovic's book, chapters 4 & 5 deal in general with your question of checkmating themes. As for the "Greek Gift" itself, he spends chapter 6 specifically on that sacrifice. Eugene Znosko-Borovsky in "The Art of Chess Combination" spends a chapter on it (and another on Lasker's double-bishop sacrifice) and Former US Correspondence Champion Jon Edwards devoted an entire book to it (Sacking The Citadel).