More fun with the Fried Liver Attack

December 23, 2023 - Chess

After writing my previous post about the Fried Liver Attack, I realized that I left out some more interesting lines that you might encounter. In this post, we will look at other positions you will likely encounter as you use this opening more often.

1. Entering the Fried Liver Attack
2. The Polerio Defense
3. The Ponziani-Steinitz Gambit
4. The Anti-Fried Liver Defense
5. Parting Thoughts

Entering the Fried Liver Attack

Just as a quick refresher, we enter the Knight Attack variation of the Italian Game after we jump our knight forward to g5 to create a powerful double attack on the vulnerable f7 square.

The Italian Game: Knight Attack. We move our knight a second time to create a powerful threat on f7.

The Polerio Defense

A common response to this double attack is to block our bishop’s vision of f7 by advancing the pawn to d5, and attacking our bishop at the same time.

Black uses their d-pawn to block our bishop's vision of f7.

We naturally capture this pawn with our pawn on e4, which removes the attack on our bishop and counterattacks our opponent’s knight.

We answer d5 by capturing the pawn with our own pawn and counterattacking their knight.

The most common response to this counterattack is for black to capture our pawn with their other knight. However, there is another approach they could take. They could simply move their attacked knight to safety on a5, where it also attacks our undefended bishop. This is called the Polerio Defense.

Our opponent moves their knight to safety and counterattacks our undefended bishop.

The followup for white is quite simple, we will get out of the attack by using our bishop to give a check.

Move our bishop to safety and give a check to the king.

After this, your opponent may block the check with their bishop, their knight, or a pawn. At this point, we have safely left the opening up a pawn. From here on, by playing solid you can gain an advantage, but you will not have an overwhelming tactical advantage as you might in many of the other lines.

The Ponziani-Steinitz Gambit

This is an unconvential way that black might respond to our dual threat on the f7 square. They could instead take our pawn on e4 with the knight, entering the gambit.

Rather than defending the f7 square, our opponent gambits the pawn by capturing our pawn on e4.

This seems like a mistake at first, because we could simply capture the knight back. The problem is that we run straight into a fork when black pushes their d4 pawn.

Capturing the undefended knight on e4 just allows our opponent to fork our knight and bishop. When the dust settles we end up down a pawn.

Similarly, if we continue with our plan of attacking with the knight on f7, our opponent is able to simply move their queen to h4, and begin to threaten checkmate.

Proceeding with our original plan will allow our opponent to threaten checkmate using their queen on h4.

To avoid all of these complications, we should simply offer a check to the king on f7, by capturing with our bishop.

To prevent our opponent from castling, and win back the pawn that they took from us on e4.

The Anti-Fried Liver Defense

The final variation actually begins before we can even move our knight to threaten the f7 pawn. This is called the Anti-Fried Liver Defense, so while not part of the Italian Game: Knight Attack, it is certainly related. Essentially, after entering the Italian Game our opponent pushes their pawn to h6 instead of moving their second knight out to f6.

Our opponent prevents the Fried Liver Attack altogether by preventing the knight move to g5 by pushing their pawn to h6.

Because our opponent has chosen to push a pawn rather than develop a piece, we can choose to attack the center by pushing our pawn to d4. After this point, much of the ideas of a standard Italian Game apply, so I would encourage you to explore further there.

In response to the Anti-Fried Liver Defense, we attack the center with d4.

Parting Thoughts

As you can see, even with a niche opening like the Fried Liver Attack, there are so many variations that can arise. It’s important to study all of the different variations, especially by practicing them in actual games. When a new variation arises, it’s important to analyze the best rebuttal and keep it mind for future games.