Let's play the italian game!
Let's learn the Italian game! This is by far the most played opening at the non-professional level. It's traditional, it's old school, it's chess the way your grandpa taught you. Let's just get into it with pawn to e4.
When Black responds pawn to e5, now we can go knight to f3, attacking Black's pawn. You've probably done this a million times before.
Most of the time black puts their knight out to defend their pawn - which brings us to the italian game. We'll have our opponent saying mama mia in no time. First, let's bring our bishop to c4. This targets the f7 pawn: the weakest pawn in black's position.
Here, the key move that makes this game an italian one is pawn to c3. We're setting up pawn to d4 in the future to attack the bishop Black just put out.
Now we continue our plan: pawn to d4 to take the center and attack this bishop. This leads to some very fun, aggressive, forcing lines.
Take back with pawn to d4. We take back with the pawn to keep the bishop under attack.
We have to protect our king. Let's do it with knight to c3, developing a piece.
We just lost a pawn, and now we have two attackers on our knight. Do you know the crazy part? We actually will ignore all of that entirely and just castle our king to safety.
If black capture with the knight, we recapture with pawn to c3.
Black is hitting our rook, and they're hoping that we move our rook out of the way so they have enough time to castle their king to safety. If Black castles, our entire attack is over before it even got started. That's why in this position, we sacrifice the rook! Bishop to a3 blocking Black's castle.
Black took the bait and lost the game! Rook to e1, checking the king. The king can't move so instead the check must be blocked.
We can grab the knight with bishop to e7. Now do you see just how much trouble Black is in if they take our rook?
Rook takes on e7.
Finally, we end up a knight up after queen to a1.
Wow! That's what black gets for trying to take our rook. Maybe next time they'll learn their lesson.
Ah, Black blocked our bishop so now they can castle again. In this case, lets slide our rook over to c1 and hit the bishop. Now we've gained a tempo: Black must move their bishop before castling.
Now an awesome move: Queen to a4. It both hits the bishop and pins the knight to the king. As you'll see in a second, Black has no way to get out of this.
Black thinks that after castling, their problems are over. But now pawn to d5 hitting the knight. The knight is the only defender of the bishop, and after it moves, we get the bishop for free.
We can't take the bishop yet! Because then black will take our knight and open up our king. Instead, let's first play knight takes knight on e5.
Now we can finally take the bishop. Queen to a5.
Well done! We are up a piece and up in development. Black really has nothing here.
Lets' trade. Bishop to b4.
There's a fork: can you spot it? Queen to e1. Hitting the king and knight
Of course, we take the free knight. Queen captures on b4.
Well done! We are up a piece, our king is castled, and our pieces are more developed.
Retreating was a huge mistake for Black. We are ready to march our pawns forward, driving Black's knights away. Pawn to e5.
The knight jumped forward. We can force him back with pawn to h3.
Now let's switch our focus to Black's other knight. Pawn to d5. This, folks, is what happens when you have pieces in the middle without pawns to defend them: you get harassed.
With black's knights on the edges of the board (gross) we can continue our master plan. Bishop to g5 attacking the queen.
Here, we can sacrifice our bishop on c4 by playing the calculated pawn takes f6. We are threatening pawn takes g7 on the next move, discovering an attack on both black's queen and rook.
Well done! We have absolutely humiliated black's position and we will be winning this game. The computer gives a +4 point advantage here.
Let's be aggressive and dynamic. Pawn to d4 to take the center and open up the position.
This was inaccurate from Black. Lets capture on e5 to regain our pawn and open up the d-file for our queen.
Black is threatening a fork (or a check) on f2. But what's better than a fork or a check threat? A checkmate threat. Queen to d5.
That's fine. King to f1. All part of the plan.
Black stopped the checkmate threat but they forgot about our other key point: we are attacking the undefended knight on e4. Queen takes e4.
Well done! We are simply up a piece.