Prospect Falls to Fremd (1): Revisiting the Fried Liver Attack

After winning the Mid-Suburban League conference tournament last year and finishing 18th at state, Prospect had high hopes for this season, but the competition is proving very tough. On Thursday, Prospect fell to Fremd 36.5 to 31.5. Robert Moskwa on 1st Board and Mike Monsen on 3rd Board continued their winning ways and Prospect got its first win on 8th Board from Brett Abraham. Unfortunately, Ekrem Genc's draw on 4th Board left Prospect short. Happily for me, there are many teachable moments to blog about:


Defending Against 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 2.Nc6 3.Bc4.


The most natural response to 1.e4 is 1...e5. After the equally natural moves 2.Nf3 Nc6, White has the choice of several systems. One of the sharpest is 3.Bc4 which immediately targets f7 which is Black's weakest square.

The Two Knights Defense 

Based on my experience the most popular response among high school players is 3...Nf6 which is known as the Two Knights Defense. The most popular move for White is then 4.Ng5.  This violates the basic opening principle (or maybe just rule of thumb) which says that no piece should be moved twice until every piece is moved once.  In this case however, the violation is justified by the fact that Black has no easy way to defend f7 against the dual threat of the knight and the bishop.

Black can if he wishes ignore the threat with 4...Bc5 which is known as the Traxler Gambit.  This is very exciting, but completely sound.  The recommended move is 4...d5, which blocks the bishop's attack on f7.  However, Black faces another choice after 5 exd5.  

Practice has shown that Black's best move here is the odd looking 5...Na5. This move also moves a piece twice when other pieces haven't moved once. On top of that, it places a knight on the edge of the board.

While the Two Knights with 5...Na5 is considered a perfectly sound approach, it is tough to play without a decent level of book knowledge  It seems to me that it is an openings where the common opening rules of thumb (like not placing a knight on the edge of the board) get violated more often than usual. One main continuation goes 7.Bb5+ c6 8.dxc6 bxc8 9.Qf3.

These are not the easiest moves to find over the board in a sixty minute game if you haven't seen them before.

The Fried Liver Attack.

After the more natural looking 5...Nxd5, White has the option of playing the Fried Liver Attack where White sacrifices a knight for a pawn with 6.Nxf7 in order to expose the Black king and draw it out to the middle of the board.  Apparently the name derives from the fact that Black frequently winds up as dead as a piece of liver.

The Fried Liver Attack is not necessarily winning for White but it is not easy for Black to defend after 6...Kxf7 7.Qf3+ when Black is forced to play 7...Ke6 in order to defend the knight on d5.

One possible continuation is 8. Nc3 Ncb4 9. Qe4 c6 10. a3 Na6 11. d4 Nac7.  However, 6.d4, delaying the knight sacrifice may actually be a better move for White.  This allows White to add his other bishop to the attack quickly and it turns out that Black doesn't have anything that particularly improves his defensive chances.  For example 6...Be7 7.Nxg7 Kxg7 8.Qf3+ gives White a revved up Fried Liver.

The Italian Game

In the ten years that I have been coaching at Prospect, I may have seen the Fried Liver a dozen times in matches.  To the best of my recollection, Black won most if not all of them.  So what is Black to do if he doesn't want to allow the Fried Liver and he doesn't want to have to find a lot of counter-intuitive moves after 5...Na5?  I've seen some players go for 3...h6 to prevent 4.Ng5, but neglecting development isn't a good idea.  My preference is simply 3...Bc5 leading to the Giuoco Piano aka the Italian Game.
 

Now 4.Ng5?? simply loses the knight to 4...Qxg5.  If White plays 4.0-0, after 4...Nf6, Black can meet 5.Ng5 with 5...0-0.

3...Bc5 doesn't eliminate the possibility that White may sacrifice material to get a nasty attack.  4.b4 is the Evans Gambit which can be very tricky to handle.  However, White often plays more quietly with 4.0-0 or 4.d3 and even if he chooses a more aggressive line, overall I think opening principles are violated much less frequently than in the Two Knights.

To sum up:   After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4

• The Two Knights Defense  3...Nf6 is perfectly sound however after White's most common move, 4.Ng5, Black is likely to wind up in tricky positions that are hard to play without some prior study.


• 3...Bc5 is also perfectly sound and the odds of Black reaching a position that requires less book knowledge is much greater.

Here's an example of a Fried Liver from the Prospect-Fremd match. In many ways, it is typical of the genre. The Black king is exposed and stuck in the middle and Black is forced to play defense the entire game. He manages to find some good defensive moves but he doesn't find enough of them.

Prospect v. Conant: To Thine Own Self Be True

Prospect beat Conant 51-17 with Conant winning on 1st and 8th boards and Prospect capturing all the middle boards.

Yoon v. Zwolenik 1st Board

In working with high school players, I have noticed that they are not always the best judges of what types of positions they handle well. For example, I have known players who would choose openings that tend to lead to sharp attacking positions, however, at the crucial moment when it came time to throw caution to the winds and break open the position, they instinctively sought a sedate move. I think that such a disconnect between preferences and instincts was at work on 1st Board.

Playing the Black pieces, Prospect's Mike Zwolenik allowed Conant's Jiwon Yoon to play the legendary "Fried Liver Attack" (Yes, that's really what it's called) in which White sacrifices a knight in order to force the Black king out into the center of the board where it is subject to a withering attack. If Black survives the attack, he has an extra knight and an easily won endgame. That's a very big if though. It is not a position that I would have any desire to play as Black, but Mike has told me that he likes it. The board looked like this after White's tenth move.

Mike has two choices: (1) Grab the White rook with 10...Nxa1 whereupon White will capture the knight on d5 leaving the Black king all alone in the middle of the board with only the e-pawn to hide behind; or (2) shore up the center with 10...c6 allowing Black to capture the knight on c2. He chose to shore up his center. Discussing the position out in the hall with Prospect coach Don Barrett, I sympathized with Mike's reluctance to part with his only centralized piece while he believed that giving up the knight to pick up the rook was worth the risk. As I look at the game more closely however, I am persuaded that Mr. Barrett was correct. I think that Black could have survived White's attack and that the extra material would have paid off in the long run.

I certainly cannot fault Mike's choice on a practical level as the position is very complicated and he had to rely on instinct to some extent because there isn't enough time to calculate out all the possibilities. On the other hand a person who "likes" to play the Black side of the Fried Liver should be a person who is willing to take his chances on his king's ability to survive a drafty without its death of cold in order to gain a material advantage. The fact that Mike wasn't inclined to do so suggests to me that he might not be as comfortable with a variation like this as he thinks he is.

As it turned out White still had a very nasty attack and Mike found several very accurate moves to stay in the game although he eventually succumbed to the pressure. Even if he had survived the attack though, material would have been even and a draw might have been the result. On the other hand, if he had survived the attack after grabbing the rook, he would have had enough extra material to win.

Meyers v. Itskovich

The game on 5th Board between Prospect's Pat Meyers and Conant's Peter Itskovich provided an interesting contrast between a player who disregarded opening principles and one who adhered to those same principles a little too dogmatically. "Don't make too many pawn moves," "Don't bring out the queen early," and "Develop knights before bishops," are all useful principles, however, all opening principles implicitly include the caveat "without a good reason." The most common good reason is to either win material or prevent the loss of material, but acquiring dominant control of the center and a substantial advantage in space can be good reasons, too.

Openings like this are not all that uncommon on the lower boards of high school matches. The failure to fight for the center may make serious players cringe, but it does not lose automatically. Moreover, just because Black ignores accepted opening theory doesn't mean that he doesn't have some tactical skills that may make White's life miserable if he doesn't take the position seriously. As the game turned out, White did was not as aggressive as he might have been and Black came out of the opening with a tenable position. However, when Black cooperated in opening the position, White was able to take advantage