What's up guys, National Master Nelson Lopez here, and today I am extremely excited to share with you probably one of the funnest chess openings you will ever play, the Fried Liver Attack. Let's go. So the fried liver attack comes out of the two knights defense and it's played by white.
So e4, e5, knight f3, knight c6, extremely common opening moves. Bishop to c4 is the Italian game. And now if black plays knight to f6, this is the two knights defense. Makes sense why it's called that. So at this point is where you start to set up the fried liver attack and you put some pressure on black very early on.
So you play knight to g5, threatening to capture on f7, which would be a fork on the queen and the rook. So the only thing that really makes sense for him to do is to play d5 to block the bishop from getting to that square. So you capture with your pawn, and the most logical move for someone who hasn't seen this before is to recapture your pawn with their knight, knight takes d5, and this allows you to play the fried liver attack.
Now, if by chance they've seen this before, knight to a5 is actually black's best move, and I'm going to cover that in another video separately. I'll link it down below. But a lot of players, especially lower rated players or players who haven't studied the opening theory of the two knights defense, will think that capturing on d5 is a move that makes a lot of sense. That's exactly what you wanted. Now you can play the fried liver attack with knight takes f7.
By the way, if you're wondering why it's called the fried liver attack, it's from a French idiom that means dead as a piece of liver. Anyway, maybe that'll make more sense when you see the position that black's king is going to be in, but let's keep going. When you capture on f7, you're setting up a fork on black's queen and rook, so he has to recapture your knight, and now you play queen to f3, check, and it's also attacking Black's knight, setting up a fork.
So if Black moves his king back somewhere, or even to the side, or blocks with the queen, you're simply going to capture the knight. That's the main threat. So the only way Black can defend his knight and get out of check is king to e6.
So at this point you've given up your knight, but what do you have in compensation? Well, black's king cannot castle. Black's king is in a terrible position.
e6 is not where you want your king to be, especially at the start of the game with the queen and the bishop right there. And additionally, this knight is pinned, and it's requiring all these pieces, his king and his queen, to defend it. So you can't really move any of these three pieces right now.
They're all kind of tied up. And all of that for one piece is a pretty good deal. So to keep up the pressure, we now play knight to c3, piling up on this knight on d5. So now we have one, two, three pieces, and he only has it defended twice. So black only has two options.
He has to move this knight either here or here to defend the knight on d5. Now first of all, let's look at b4. If he moves to b4, he's defending his knight, and he's also threatening c2 to fork your king and your rook.
But we actually don't care about that fork, and the move I recommend you play is a3. and let him capture, move your king to d1, let him capture your rook, and then capture his knight on d5. Now we gave up our rook, but we got a knight, and more importantly, we have this discovered check threat on his king. A discovered check just means that you move one piece out of the way and then you have check from another piece.
So in this case we're going to move our knight out of the way and we'll have check from the bishop. It's very powerful because we can pretty much move this knight anywhere we want to and not worry about it being captured because the bishop is going to be able to move it anywhere we want to. So we're going to move this the bishop's going to be putting him in check.
For example, knight takes c7 looks pretty good, and then knight takes a8 because the bishop's going to be putting him in check. Additionally, the only real defender that he has for his king is this lone little pawn. We're going to play d4 pretty soon and get rid of that. He doesn't have any pieces really left defending his king, so giving up the rook over here in the corner really doesn't matter. There's a good chance we're going to get checkmate, and the game's going to be over very soon.
So at this point, black really has to get out of the discovered check. So if he moves his king to like d6, Now you can just follow up with d4. And again, once this pawn is gone, there's not going to be any pieces left to defend his king. And really, black's position is so terrible.
Just as an example, if he captures your pawn, you can play bishop to f4 check. King doesn't have a lot of good options. He doesn't want to go back to e6 because he'll be into the discovered check. He can go to c6.
That's also a discovered check from the queen. d7 isn't great either. But White has all kinds of fantastic moves. Rook to e1 looks really good, trapping the king from going here, and you're going to have checkmate shortly thereafter.
You can even play knight to b6, and if he captures, he's going to get checkmated after queen to d5. So let's just look at some options. If he tries to move his king to here or here, we'll say king to e7, you're going to play queen to f7, checkmate, because the bishop covers here, this bishop protects, and then the queen is just covering all the other squares. Same thing's going to happen if he goes to e8, queen to f7 is checkmate.
The only thing he can try is bishop to d6, but now you also have mate in two, queen to f5, check. Again, if he moves to here or to e8, queen to f7 is checkmate, because it's defended by the bishop. So he has to try to run over here, but then you have queen to b5, also checkmate. So you can just see how dangerous it is for black. There are very few moves that he can play, and it's extremely hard to find the correct moves.
I mean, even at 2,000 and above level, players are going to be making mistakes if they haven't studied the theory behind it. So very fun opening to play. I would recommend that you play this every chance you get, and you might not win all the games. You might miss some of these tactics, but... It's going to be a lot of fun, and you're going to learn a lot from it as well.
Okay, so going back to this position, we just played knight to c3, if you remember, putting pressure on d5. And I told you that there was two moves black could play. So let's look at if he plays knight to e7. So knight to e7 is really not great either. either for black.
It blocks both of these pieces. This bishop is blocked. He's really all tied up, doesn't have a lot of good options. Your pieces are just doing amazing.
You've got this nice pin on his knight still. And really all you need to do is figure out how to get rid of this pawn and all the lines are going to be open and then you can start looking for checkmates. So what you should play in this case is d4. And the idea is to just open up the king. Get rid of this pawn in front of his king so you have more lines to attack his king.
If he captures you, it's really not a good idea for black. You're going to play queen to e4 check. His king's got to move somewhere. Let's say he goes to f7. Now you can capture this knight because he only has two defenders.
And you have one, two, three attackers. So knight takes d5. And black is just completely getting crushed here. It's only a matter of time before you should be able to break through and win the game.
So after d4, he really has to play c6 to get another defender on his knight. And then you can capture on e5. He can't recapture you or again his king is going to be into all kinds of trouble. You can play like bishop g5 and it's pretty much over. You're going to castle next move and then bring this rook over and there's no way black is surviving that.
And black does not have really any good options. He can try knight g6 but you're just going to castle. And if he tries to take your pawn, rook to e1. This knight is pinned by the rook. This knight is pinned by the bishop.
His pieces are all on the back rank. I mean, this is just crushing. Like, it's only a matter of time.
You're going to follow up with bishop f4, putting more pressure. You know, you can bring this rook over if you need to. But it's pretty much game over at this point. White has a huge, huge lead.
And it's only a matter of time before black's position is going to crumble. So to kind of sum up, you know, you sacrifice the piece, but you get his king in the center. And then all you need to do is just figure out a way to break open the center, develop your pieces, and look for opportunities to just... either get checkmate or win more pieces and it should be a lot of fun to play as white. Well I hope you guys enjoyed that video as much as I did making it.
Like I said it's a ton of fun to play. Let me know in the comments below if you've tried it, if you've gotten some cool wins or some checkmates. I'd love to hear about those.
If you have questions or anything else that you want me to cover let me know. As always thanks for watching and take care.