The Fried Liver Attack

One of my big dilemmas as a chess player who wants to improve and win more games, is whether to go in for one of the aggressive openings where material is sacrificed in order to gain a positional advantage early on, or whether to stick to a slow and steady approach where no material is sacrificed and the aim is to very gradually gain the upper -hand. The aggressive approach is great if you want to win games quickly and stylishly, and are able to overwhelm your opponent in the early or middle stages of the game. The problem is that if you cannot press home your initial positional advantage, then the longer the game continues, the more chance your opponent has to hold on to or increase the lead in material you have given them, and as the game becomes simplified with less and less pieces on the board, the more significant a small material advantage becomes.

One of the aggressive openings that I have tried to use from time to time is the ‘Italian’ game, and a variation of it that I seems to me to be particularly ingenious is known as the ‘fried liver attack’. The sheer dastardliness of this attack comes from the fact that it involves placing you knight early on in the game, on your opponents f7 square (f2 if your opponent is playing white), which effectively forks his Queen and Rook in their starting positions meaning that the only way he can avoid losing material early on is by taking your knight with his king.  Once he has made this move he has lost the opportunity to castle, and his king is being drawn towards the centre of the board. From there the general idea is that having forced the enemy king into the open you then throw everything you can muster at him in order to keep him off balance and force home your positional advantage. The problem for you however, is that you have exchanged your knight for a mere pawn, leaving you with a two point deficit to begin the game, so unless you are able to follow through and force a check mate there is a strong chance you will lose the game.

In the game that is illustrated below, I attempted the Italian opening and the fried liver attack, but was totally unable to make my positional advantage pay off, and by the end of the game it was my opponent who had turned the tables on me and was conducting a ruthless attack on my king from which I was only able to escape by desperately clinging on and playing defensively for a draw.

It started off ok with me making the classic opening moves of the Italian game, with my bishop bearing down on black’s f7 square, and my knight accomplishing the fried liver attack on move five. Black takes my knight with his king, and I follow through by moving my queen to f3 putting black in cheque once again; so far so good.

After black has blocked with his queen however, I decide to make the exchange, and black is then able to take my queen with his knight, which also places it in a good defensive position in front of his king. Already my attack seems to have faded, as I now have only a pawn and a bishop which have moved from their original squares. Undeterred however I use the next three moves to bring out another pawn,  put my own king into what seems to be a safe position by castling, and develop my dark squared bishop. It seems to me at this stage that I am beginning to develop a build up of pressue on black’s king via the defending knight on f6, but black’s move 10 is interesting in that he begins a counter attack by bringing his other knight forward to D4.

He attacks with this piece again on move eleven, taking my pawn on C2, and forcing me to move my rook on A1 to avoid losing it. I now have the general idea to attack the centre with my pawns which are backed up by my rooks, but seem unable to maintain any control in the centre with my bishop and knight, and am forced to exchange them, which again favours my opponent as he is now three points up in material. From move seventeen to move twenty, the only way I can see to continue the attack on black’s king is by moving the pawns which should be protecting my king forward into the fray, but this costs me when black is able to exploit the gap that this has created in my defence on his move twenty and put me in cheque with his bishop. I respond by moving my king out towards the pawn defence that moved forward and deserted him, black continues to attack me with his queenside pawns and by move twenty three, there is another exchange of material as I give up the second of my bishops. Although I capture another pawn on move twenty–four, we are now heading towards the end game, and the extra bishop which my opponet has left on the board should now give him a clear advantage as the game begins to simplify.

There now follows a series of moves and manouvres to try and gain the upper hand with neither the white or the black king seeming particularly well defended. Whilst I am able to put my opponents king into check again on move thirty, he is able to move easily away from my rook, and so I shift my strategy for salvaging the game at this point to attempt the promotion of my B file pawn which is protected by my rooks on B1 and A7 squares. Whilst I concentrate on pushing my pawn up the board as far as B7 however my opponent has skillfully manouvred his two rooks and bishop into positions where they are able to freely attack my undefended king.  On move thirty–eight my pawn does indeed become a queen which at last gives me a clear advantage in material, but with the stranglehold that the three black pieces now have on my king at the other end of the board, it looks as though this has come too late to save the game. Indeed, it is only thanks to the fact that I move my king around on the same four squares F1, F2, G1 and G2 that the host site declares a draw and I gain my lucky escape.

I think the important thing in chess, whether you are a strong or a week player, is to try and learn from your mistakes and the games you play and to develp your own style and methodology as you progress. One impression that I certainly gained from this game is that whilst an agressive opening gambit can often seem to give you a good positional advantage, unless you are able to press this home fairly decisively by the middle game, things can begin to get harder and harder for you as the game continues. I must also admit that I have attempted this opening in other games, and seem to have suffered one or two humiliating defeats against players that were ranked quite a bit lower than myself and against whom I might really be expected to be able to win. For the moment then I must say that I am trying to stick as much as possible to the slow and steady openings such as the London system or the Stonewall attack, but on the other hand that does not mean I will not keep experimenting and trying and re-trying new things again in the future.