The stunning Turquoise Belt is earned by executing a sacrifice. Sacrifices are situations on a chessboard in which you give up material in order to get more than you gave up. Rooks are sacrificed to gain a queen. Queens are sacrificed to gain a checkmate. 

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Beginners often mistake a blunder with a sacrifice. A blunder is when you simply make a horrible move and lose a piece with no compensation. A sacrifice is when you make what appears to be a horrible move, but in actuality it is a brilliant move, changing the chessboard just enough so that you come out ahead. 

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Funny story: when The Knight School was first established in 2007, some of the hotshot original students invented a tactic called "The Fake Mistake." It involved doing a sacrifice and then dramatically grabbing their hair and acting like it was an unintentional blunder, which often tricked the opponent into taking the piece and thus falling for the trick. Fake tears were shed. Fake screams were unleashed. The Fake Mistake was outlawed as bad sportsmanship in 2007, but man there were some Oscar-winning performances before Prohibition began!

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Is the move shown below where the white knight moves to the green square a blunder or a sacrifice?

That is a sacrifice! If black captures the knight, white checkmates on the yellow F7 square.

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Here is another example. Is the move shown a sacrifice or a blunder?

That's a sacrifice for sure! Once the rook captures the bishop, pawn to E6 forces the king onto the 8th rank where it is promptly checkmated by the white rook. Sacrificing the bishop removed the black rook from the protection of the back row, which made possible the mate in two!

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The below position is one of the most famous sacrifices in chess history. It was executed by the amazing Paul Morphy during the 1800s. Can you spot the winning move for white? He did!

The game-winning sacrifice is right here:

Right! The white queen moves to the green square, checking the black king. The only move for black is to accept the sacrifice and capture the white queen. One black takes that queen, white can move the rook and checkmate on the yellow square. Sacrificing a queen, or any piece, to gain a checkmate or more material than you lost is worthy of that Turquoise Belt! So in chess class, think, think, think and generate a sacrifice in your mind, then execute that sacrifice on the chessboard, and finally raise that hand and call "Referee!" The Turquoise Belt awaits!