Anti-Fried Liver Defense? Why?

No-one wants to beat a completely incompetent player. It's boring.

Incidentally I suspect there's a forced win against it. We can't expect Stockfish to find it. Do we worship Stockfish?

We don't worship Stockfish, but with an Elo of around 3300, we respect it.  

"...perfect game". It is the absolutly opposite! Black should play Nf3 instead of ...3h6. If white plays 4. Ng5 then black plays 4...d5 and problem solved. In your line, black is just giving white a free development move!

5. exd5, 5... Na5,  6. Bb5+, 6... c7, 7. dxc7  7... Nxc7. then problem solved.

 Nah, does not even have to play Na5

 after 5. exd5 5...Nxe5 6. Nxf7. this is the fried liver attack. sacrificing a knight to drag the king to the centre and either checkmate the king or win material.  

You should welcome poor move by your opponent, 3...h6 is just bad and doesn't contribute to helping black develop his pieces.

I think you missed Qh5 on multiple occasions 

Without deep analysis I would say moves 6, 9, 10 and 11 with varying degrees of effectiveness. 

>>>I spent half an hour looking at this and concluded that 4. d4 ...ed 5. 0-0 is probably correct, since black must make an unforced move and white has a choice of three natural responses, depending on how black continues.

Yes .... just goes to show that 2200 to 2400's may not always be all that good, since black's third and white's fifth moves were a bit off. I suppose that rating was a daily chess.com grade.

Wondering if Stockfish 8 agrees that 2Q1C played a perfect game.  Actually, he darn near did.

I'm sure his fifth move was wrong. He should have castled, which is an indirectly attacking move but non-forcing. There are three replies white can make ...... and N x d4 is only one of them, depending on what black does after 0-0.

Well said!

Even if you don't like gambits, you've got to like White after 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 h6.

Stockfish 8 likes 4 d4, 4 O-O, 4 d3, and 4 Nc3, in that order, giving White a slight edge.  Since I never play 1...e5 as Black, I hadn't looked at the Fried Liver Attack in detail, but I sure welcome passive moves making up a defense. I played very Nimzowitsch-like prophylactic moves throughout the game, which got good ratings from the chess,com move analysis and great ones from Lucas Chess/Stockfish 8 analysis, which showed I dominated most of the game:

The CAPS score for each side was over 95% through the 27th move.

The only really bad move in the whole game was Black's 28th move (below).

My "blunder" was giving away the opposition with my 36th move, but I regained it.

4. Nc3 was a bad move, surely. What does it accomplish beyond allowing black to make a rescuing move? 5. d3 was bad. That makes some sense out of h6.

Good points.  If I had it to do over I'd probably play 4 d4.  But 4. Nc3 is not a bad move in that, according to Stockfish, it maintained about a 1/4 pawn lead for White. And note that chess.com's CAPS rating had me around 93%-96% for most of the game. I had just gone through a few off-line games where I attacked too fast, didn't maintain any safety, and got burned. I decided on the Italian Game in order to see if I could make anything out of a game where I did less threatening but also left no weaknesses.

1/4 pawn lead isn't sufficient for a win, don't forget, and also, Stockfish isn't going to do a 30-ply search, which is where wins will presumably be found. So Stockfish only assesses the short term advantage of getting a piece out in the opening, as opposed to two pawn moves and it doesn't look at "what useful attack can that piece assist in?" and "does Nc3 actually block white's position by preventing c3 and Qb3, which are more pointed methods of taking over control of the centre and attacking black's k-side?" Nc3 supports e4 in a situation where white would probably rather sacrifice that pawn. It does have the virtue of clamping down on d7-d5 but, at the moment, black isn't threatening that yet and would lose a pawn.

Stockfish is no genie, and certainly can make mistakes, some subtle and some larger. However, I think you are vastly underestimating stockfish. I think I can say with certainty that stockfish did in fact consider every question you posed. Remember that engines, unlike humans consider every move. That means stockfish consider the immediate c3, and saw the followup idea of Qb3. It also saw other ideas with the idea of keeping c3. It didn't forget any of these things, it just ultimately decided that the immediate Nc3 is stronger. I think the biggest misunderstanding you seem to have is that even if stockfish's idea is the wrong idea or a sub-optimal idea, it certainly played Nc3 with a concrete idea in mind, which is more than a lot of human players would have. It said "I will play Nc3 so that I can meet this with this and this with this and this with this etc.)" It didn't just say "a piece in the center is good." That's a human way of thinking, not an engine way of thinking. Engines think concretely and with good followup and plans to their moves.

However, I think you are vastly underestimating stockfish. I think I can say with certainty that stockfish did in fact consider every question you posed.>>

If so, then it incorrectly weighted its analysis and I'm not underestimating it. You'll never learn to play chess well by relying on a computer engine for your out-of-book openings. It's necessary to understand that it doesn't perform a complete search at about 30 ply and also that computers tend to be programmed very conservatively, because their main virtue is a lack of tactical blunders and their main modus operandi is waiting to pounce on their opponents' blunders. 3. ...h6 is a blunder but Stockfish only recognises it as dubious at worst.

As I said, you'll never learn to play chess well by relying on a computer for your openings.

Yes, I know. But the problem is solved; no mate! Thought is certainly unpleasant to have your king in the center, if you play OTB with standard time control, you will atleast get a draw. I defended this against a 2,1k OTB player, and would had drawed if I didn't make a blunder in move 40