jump at the chance (to do something)

To accept or seize with alacrity an opportunity (to do something). Mark complains about his teaching job a lot, but I knew if he were offered a tenured position in the school, he would jump at the chance. When our manager said she was leaving the company, I jumped at the chance to fill the job.

jump at the chance, to

To seize an opportunity. Jumping at various kinds of opportunity is recorded from the seventeenth century on, often likened to how a cock would jump at a gooseberry. Sir Walter Scott particularly liked this analogy, using it for jumping at an offer and jumping at “the ready penny.”