#friedliver #traxler 

Do you want to crush opponents who play the Fried Liver Attack? 🫵🤨

I know I do! 🤩

The fearsome Fried Liver Attack is commonly seen at beginner-intermediate level chess. In fact, when we examine the Lichess community database, every single move up to White’s glorious knight sacrifice (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Ng5 d5 5. exd5 Nxd5 6. Nxf7) is the top played move in the position and the formal Fried Liver Attack position has been reached almost 5 million times!

White has a strong motivation to play for the Fried Liver. It is objectively good for White at about [+1], but in practice, it is much more winning than what the engine evaluation would suggest! In the Lichess database, White has a crushing win likelihood advantage of 69% vs Black 29% - astonishing!

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Note: the Fried Liver Attack is featured in a chapter in “Become a Chess Assassin! Learn to play the best chess opening attacks”, now on sale at Amazon! The full chapter is available in the PDF book sample available here.

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So, how can we respond with Black?

The Fried Liver Attack comes out of the Italian Game: Two Knights Defense, and White signals their intentions with the Knight Attack (4. Ng5), pushing forward their knight into enemy territory. Early in my chess journey, I avoided the Fried Liver Attack by responding with (3… Bc5) to White’s Italian Game and entering the Giuoco Piano lines. However, there is no “crushing” as the Giuoco Piano is literally, the “quiet game”. As someone who did not, and still does not, enjoy the Giuoco Piano, I needed something that was more fun!

The first anti-Fried Liver Attack approach that I learned to play (and still enjoy) was the Ponziani-Steinitz Gambit. This is an aggressive gambit (4… Nxe4!?) that comes as a surprise. It is played in only 4% of games against the Knight Attack and despite looking like an obvious mistake (objectively, it is), it can be difficult for White to respond correctly. In fact, it is empirically the most winning anti-Fried Liver line by Black, with a win likelihood of White 45% vs Black 52%.

However, I’ve recently been learning, practicing, and playing the venomous Traxler Counterattack (4… Bc5). Where the Ponziani-Steinitz Gambit can be a bit thuggish in character (we immediately wallop White’s hapless e4-pawn to signal our intentions for a fight!), the Traxler Counterattack lends itself to some absolutely beautiful lines.

Traxler Counterattack: the anti-Fried Liver response for the refined Romanticist! 🤩

Karel Traxler (1866-1936) was a Catholic priest by profession, but perhaps better known for his chess. He was a literal Bohemian, born in the then Kingdom of Bohemia, and most famous as a composer of chess puzzles in the Bohemian school. This school of chess composition is an expression of Romanticism, and places emphasis on artistic beauty and elegance, and the number of variations finished by model checkmates. The Traxler Counterattack is named after the extraordinary game played between Jörg Reinisch and Karel Traxler in 1890. In this short game, Traxler won on turn 17 by checkmate down 16 points of material! The Chess.com analytic engine gives Traxler three brilliancies in (Reinisch—Traxler, 1890, Hostouň, Bohemia).

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Game 1: The Basic Idea
https://www.chess.com/analysis/library/3uRVCNumeN

The basic idea is that after White gleefully captures our f7-pawn (5. Nxf7), forking our queen and rook, we up the ante and strike back and capture their f2-pawn with the more forcing (5… Bxf2+), which comes with check!

The fascinating thing here, is the effect of analysis depth on the engine’s evaluation. It seems to follow that of human intuition in this position! At low depth (engine), and at first glance (human), it seems that White is obviously winning. However, the longer you look at the position, the more one might see that Black seems to have tactical resources lurking at every turn. At high depth, the engine calls the position equal [0.00]. But what about the impending capture of Black’s f2-bishop? As a rule of thumb, if there is a major discrepancy between the engine evaluation and material on the board, it implies that the player with less material must have some sort of commensurate compensation. In this position, Black has the immediate tactical advantage. In terms of win likelihood, White wins 41% vs Black 57% from the position!

The strategic idea to the Traxler Counterattack is that while the goal of White’s early attack is to win material, the goal of Black’s attack is checkmate! The potential downside to the Knight Attack/Fried Liver is that White hasn’t finished developing or built their defences. Black makes use of tempo winning moves (checks, and potential sacrifices), to launch a rapid coordinated attack, including developing their queen.

This first game was against the “Harmony Chord” bot in Chessiverse, which is an online service that provides hundreds of humanised chess bots. I’m thinking of making a review soon, but these are all AI-bots (like Maia) that are designed to play like people of various strengths and styles. This was pretty cool as these bots will potentially react like people to tricky Romantic attacks, including resigning when having suffered “emotional damage”!

Against (5… Bxf2+), Black has two options that maintain [0.00]:

• 6. Kxf2 – capture the bishop, which is the most common response. It wins material but gives Black tactical chances and the win likelihood advantage.
• 6. Kf1 – sidestep the check and refuse the bishop sacrifice. This is the better move despite the objective evaluation being the same [0.00]. The win likelihood is balanced between White and Black.

In this game, White captured the bishop (6. Kxf2). The next couple of moves are relatively simple. Firstly, Black’s knight captures the e4-pawn with check (6… Nxe4+), which also opens the dark square diagonal for the queen. White must move the king again and of the six legal moves, only (7. Kg1) and (7. Ke3) maintain equality. For both lines, Black brings out their queen (7… Qh4!) and Black is immediately threatening checkmate on the f2 square!

In this game, the “Harmony Chord” bot chose to play the very human-like capture of the “hanging” rook (8. Nxh8??) and thus, blundered immediate checkmate (8… Qf2#)!

Game 2: Against a human Random Noob!
https://www.chess.com/analysis/library/JZ6ygEy74

This second game was against a real human opponent, and we entered the same line of the Traxler Counterattack. They accepted the bishop sacrifice, and after (6. Nxe4+), opted to return their king to the throne (7. Ke1??), which is a blunder. As per the description above, the best move is (7… Qh4+!), which comes with check! Against the check, White has only a single move that avoids checkmate, which is (8. g3).

In the position, White’s best move is to capture the knight and accept the loss of the rook (9. hxg3 Qxh1+) despite it looking awful! Just like in game 1, in a seeming moment of respite, one of the top moves for Black is to snatch the “hanging” rook (9. Nxh8??) and this blunders a forced checkmate!

The quickest path the checkmate is NOT the natural looking (9… Nxh1+), capturing the rook with discovered check. But rather, (9… Ne4+!)! In the game, White loses on the spot with (10. Kf1? Qf2#). The correct move was (10. Ke2) and watch the video and study the PGN to see the very nice checkmate line, which uses the knights and queen to corral the king onto the third rank, and his doom!

Game 3: Against a stronger player who knows (6. Kf1) against the Traxler!
https://www.chess.com/analysis/library/ZcSzQ8ZjC

This game was also against a human Random Noob, and against the bishop sac, they recognised that the best move was the sidestep the king and refuse the offer (6. Kf1). For Black, it’s important to remember that your queen is hanging! So (6… Qe7) is a forced move and White seems to win our rook with (7. Nxh8). Have we made a terrible mistake?!

Fascinatingly, the answer is NO! At high depth, the evaluation remains [0.00]. The critical move to know for Black is thematic in these positions (7… d5!). This disconnects White’s c4-bishop from the f7 square, which means that White’s knight on h8 will become stranded and unable to escape. More importantly, it opens the light square diagonal for our own c8-bishop. Notice that that Bg4 potentially traps White’s queen on her starting square!  If White is careless and plays (8. Bxd5) to maintain vision of the f7 square, then (8… Bg4) wins White’s queen and practically, the game!

In the game, White sees this and naturally moves their queen out of the way (8. Qf3??), which was a mistake. Their best move was to capture my f2-bishop with their king (8. Kxf2), as this gives an escape square for the queen. Meaning that (8… dxc4) will follow, and we’ve traded bishops, with White’s knight remaining stranded as the price of the rook. Equality [0.00].

I don’t play the next few moves the most accurately, but the tactical ideas are simple.

• Castle queenside and capture White’s stranded knight!
• Advance with pieces (knights and or bishops) to make threats.
• Control the fully open f-file with a rook.

White’s queen and king on the f-file was something that could be attacked with my rook on the f-file (14… Rf8). This won tempo as Black attempted to move their queen out of the threatened pin (15. Qe3??), but this was the wrong move as (15… Ng4+!), a discovered check, with the knight having an attack on the queen. Emotional damage, White resigns, good game, GG!

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This was only an introduction to the wonderful Traxler Counterattack, and it is something that requires some study to play well. However, it’s a brilliant, beautiful, and Romantic way to respond to the Knight Attack, the attempted Fried Liver Attack, and it isn’t easy for White to refute.

I cover the Traxler Counterattack in detail in “Become a Chess Assassin!”, including the major lines and variants out of the attack, as well as the refutation, using exemplar historical games! Don’t miss out your copy! ☺️