The Italian Game - Key Ideas, Concepts, Main Lines (15-Minute Chess Opening Series)

This position actually for a long time was kind of a debate of like , OK , is it better for black ?

Is it better for white ?

Like what's going on ?

And people didn't know and they were kind of experimenting and trying a lot of different lines .

And one of the , the main lines that was tried was knight to C three .

And the idea was that yes , we're losing our E four pawn because this is pinned .

But we're gonna follow it up by castling .

And now if black takes and we take and they take , look at Black's king .

This is the whole point , right ?

We're gonna play queen B three .

We're attacking the bishop lining up here and blacks actually in trouble .

Hey guys and welcome to this 15 minute opening lesson on the Italian game .

My goal is to give you all of the essential concepts , ideas , the main lines , whether you're looking to play this for white or if you're playing as Black against the Italian game .

So if you already play this opening , you're gonna wanna watch this video or if you're thinking about playing it , but you don't really know much about it .

You want to just get the basics quickly .

This is the video for you .

I'm gonna be targeting 1000 to 1500 rated players .

But if you're a little higher or a little lower , you're probably still gonna learn a thing or two .

Having said that , let's go ahead and get started right .

So the starting position for the Italian game is E 45 9 F 39 C six and bishop to C four , white immediately puts the bishop on this diagonal , attacking the weak F seven square .

And there's actually two main ways that the game can go depending on black's response .

So the primary responses for black are knight to F six and bishop to C five .

Now , the thing about 92 F six is it allows this move nine to G five , which leads to some very interesting things .

So in my opinion , the two knights defense is the more you might say , exciting , aggressive approach from black because it allows this and we're gonna talk about that in just a second .

Bishop C five , you'll notice one key difference is we can no longer if we're white play the move nine to G five because the queen simply takes it .

And so that's kind of a big difference between bishop C five and 92 F six .

Now , if you're playing as black and you would like to kind of avoid some of the main theory behind these two moves .

What I recommend you do is play the move bishop to E seven .

It's not as well known .

It's not studied as much , but it's a very solid move .

It prevents any nine G five ideas , right ?

You have lots of pieces lined up there and you're gonna simply develop and castle and the game goes on .

You're playing chess and you have a nice position .

So for example , let's say White Castle , you play 92 , F 692 G five doesn't make any sense anymore .

For white , you simply castle , which is not usually an option in the 95 lines , you just castle and now white doesn't want to make this trade .

This is not a good trade for white , right ?

Giving up the two pieces for the rook and upon this is makes no sense .

So black is totally fine .

So if you are looking to avoid some of the main lines , consider looking into the bishop E seven move .

All right .

So let's actually go ahead and start with night two F six .

So this is like I mentioned the two nights defense .

Now personally , uh when I'm playing as black against the Italian game , I like to play 92 F six .

I think we get some very interesting positions and I like the two nights defense .

Now there's two primary ways that white will approach this option .

Number one , I kind of already touched on knight to G five is the more aggressive approach .

White saying , OK , you're gonna let me , I'm gonna go for it .

I'm gonna attack the F seven pond .

And my thread is to simply take here and fork your pieces or even take with the bishop and put you in check both of which look pretty scary for black .

And we don't have uh an easy way to defend that .

And so the main line here is D five blocking off the bishop .

Now , this is where we could enter into what is known as the fried liver attack .

So if white captures and if black recaptures with the knight , now , white can sacrifice the knight on F seven .

And the whole point here is that you've got a fork .

So black has to take you and then you play queen to F three again , forking these pieces .

And so the only way black defends the night is by playing move king to E six and yes , temporarily , black is ahead of peace , but White has a lot of pressure here .

The night can come out and keep attacking .

You're gonna castle D four rookie one , very dangerous position , not for the faint of heart .

And now you can play it .

Actually , I have a video on the channel where I talk about some of these lines .

It's playable for black if you know what you're doing , but you have to make sure you know , you know what you're getting into .

And for most beginners , I wouldn't recommend going down that route .

So after you play D five white captures if you are trying to avoid the fried liver , uh what I recommend is the move knight to a five .

So you don't take it back .

You don't allow that sacrifice .

You play night a five , simply attacking White's bishop .

Now , a lot of beginners when they see this move , it's kind of like , well , are you not supposed to put our knights on the edge of the board ?

And normally you're not .

But this is one kind of exception .

And it's because you're putting the pressure on the bishop , which is actually really annoying for White .

Basically , you're , you're forcing White to move the bishop off of this diagon or you're just gonna take it right ?

Like if they just move back , you're just gonna take it .

So most people will play bishop to B five check .

You're gonna play C six takes takes and you might say , didn't black just get a bunch of isolated pawns .

Well , yes , they did .

But the point is you get some nice tempos on the bishop .

And it turns out that this night on G five is kind of weird once the bishop is no longer helping attack F seven , it's like , well , what are you , what are you doing ?

Right .

So one of the lines here queen to have three whites trying to pin the rook .

Um But what black can do is simply bishop E seven .

Allow this trade .

Yes , it looks a bit scary .

You're getting forked .

But bishop D seven , the queen defends the rook .

And after white moves black simply castles and look at this position for black , all three pieces are developed .

The king is castled .

You can use all of these files to attack .

You can put your rooks wherever you want .

I really like this for black .

I think this is a really nice line to look into .

And even though you're down two ponds , you have lots of compensation .

This is gonna be a lot of fun to play as black , black and white has to figure out , you know how to survive with no pieces developed , right ?

So definitely check out this 9285 line if you know , you're trying to avoid the fried liver and you're looking for something interesting to play with black .

This is definitely one that I recommend .

OK .

So let's go back .

So that's 95 .

All right , you play D five and then you , you know , you go for that the other way that white will uh a lot of times approach .

This is just by playing D three and they're kind of just looking for a quiet game .

Uh They don't want any fireworks , they're just gonna , you know , develop their pieces .

The game goes on .

Uh One thing you can play is D five .

This is a move that I like to play .

It's not very well known .

It gets very wild .

Um I did a video recently a live stream where I talk about this .

So check that out if you're interested .

Uh But most likely , you know , you can just develop your pieces .

The game goes on .

Nothing really crazy to talk about here .

Now , there's one other thing I do want to mention that I just forgot about if they do play Knight to G five .

We already talked about D five and we talked about the fried liver and we talked about nine to a five .

The other option that you have is what's called the Traxler counterattack .

You play bishop to C five and you're basically just ignoring this , completely ignoring this .

Uh and giving white the option to take it either way .

OK ?

If they take it with the knight , they have a fork .

But you're gonna just say , you know what ?

I don't even care .

I'm going on the offensive .

The point is that if they take you , your knight's coming in , your queen's coming out , you might lose your rook in the process .

But if you get check man , who cares ?

Very wild stuff .

Uh Also white doesn't actually have to take your bishop .

They can just find their king over .

In which case , I think you bring your queen here and you know this happens and it's , it's wild .

Uh But pretty crazy .

Um Also they can take you this way .

You can play King E seven .

You can bring your rook over at some point and attack on the F file .

It's completely wild .

And if that's what you like to play , you definitely might want to look into the tracker counterattack with Bishop C five .

All right .

So , uh , we talked about 95 .

We talked about D three .

There's one more move here .

I wanna mention Knight to C three .

Sometimes people will play this and it actually is a little bit of a mistake , you might say , because it allows this tactical idea by black knight takes E four and it looks like we're just giving up our night for free .

Right .

Well , the idea is we're going to follow it up with D five forking these pieces .

And at the end of the day , I don't know what white's gonna do .

Let's say they take it at the end of the day , we , we like we like the position we have , we've just freed up our bishops .

We have nice control over the center .

White has to move .

It's great for black .

It's usually a pretty good trade for , for black .

And even here , if they decide to sacrifice the bishop first and then take our night , we're still going to play D five .

And yes , it might look a little scary , but we're gonna tuck our king back here and we have complete control over the center .

We have the bishop pair , which is also a good thing .

And because of this , you put all this together Blacks actually Stockfish says black is winning uh which is funny minus 3.3 .

So it's great for black is the point .

So if you do see this knight to C three move , just remember you have this tactic available .

Takes ND five , forking these pieces .

OK .

So that's essentially uh it when it comes to the two nights defense .

Now , the other option that black has that I mentioned Bishop to C five .

This is called the piano and also very popular , like I mentioned before , you can no longer play nine to G five here as white .

So White has to kind of resort to other plans .

And typically you have three options .

Number one would be the move at night to C three where White's just saying , you know what , I'm just gonna go for a kind of a quiet game maybe night to have six D 3d 6 and we're playing chess .

There is one idea here .

Bishop G five , black has to be a little careful of black castles and ignores this pin .

Black's in trouble after 90 D five .

Because now how do you deal with this ?

You can't really defend this night very easily after white takes it , you're gonna have to open up your king and that's not really good for black .

OK .

So what black needs to do is before that happens , play age six and force White to make a decision about this bishop .

If white goes back , black is gonna play G five .

It's a pretty interesting position .

I don't know if either side is gonna castle kings side now because if you're white , you castle here , you gotta watch out for the pawns .

If you're black , your king is open .

So it's , it's kind of interesting as to where the kings are gonna go .

Of course , white could play captures and then hop the night in .

It looks like a nasty fork .

But actually you just play queen .

The eight , the game goes on .

It's pretty equal .

All right .

So that's the , you know , night to C three followed by D three line .

Pretty quiet and calm .

Mostly you're just playing chess .

Then we have the move B four .

This is called the Evans Gambit .

The point is white gives up the pawn .

Black can take it either way .

And the main idea is that you're gonna play C three with the tempo on the bishop , followed by a quick D four and get control of that center .

You don't really care that you lost a pawn because you're going for the initiative .

You're going to open lines and files and , and you're trying to attack .

Uh I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this at the end of the video .

So we'll come back to that , but just keep this in mind the Evans Gambit , right ?

And then the third and this is really the main line against the , the bishop C five moves C three white saying OK , I really want to play D four and get two pawns in the center .

I couldn't do it because I only have two pieces .

Defending black has three pieces stopping me .

So I need an extra piece .

That's where C three comes in .

Getting ready to play D four .

Now , usually black will play 92 F six and attack this E four pawn and white has two options .

You can just defend it .

Uh And you get an again kind of a quiet game .

The game goes on .

You're gonna castle in at some point in the future .

Maybe you'll play D four or you follow through with your plan and you play D four .

Now , here's where it gets pretty interesting .

Usually black takes , we take back and then there's bishop to be four check .

Now on bishop to B four check , we have to decide how are we blocking this check ?

And this position actually for a long time was kind of a debate of like , OK , is it better for black ?

Is it better for white ?

Like what's going on ?

And people didn't know and they were kind of experimenting and trying a lot of different lines .

And one of the , the main lines that was tried was knight to C three .

And the idea was that yes , we're losing our E four pawn because this is pinned .

But we're gonna follow that up by castling .

And now if black takes and we take and they take , look at Black's king .

This is the whole point , right ?

We're gonna play Queen B three .

We're attacking the bishop lining up here and Blacks actually in trouble .

For example , if they try to get greedy and take the rook , you take here with check , you bring the bishop to G five .

Sorry , the queen is actually trapped .

So after nine to E seven , you play Rook to E one .

Black has no way to stop this threat .

They're losing their queen , they're losing their night , their kings in trouble and whites basically just winning .

So there was lots of chances for white to get into a really nice position after this line .

So players with the black pieces said , you know what ?

We don't have to take it with the knight , we can take it with the bishop .

And now when white recaptures , we'll play the move D five .

We shut down the bishop .

We control this night which now blocks the E file and we're much safer .

And this is a much more solid position for black .

And it was so then uh the players on the white side decided , you know what , instead of taking back here , why don't we play D five first to stop black and yes , we , we're temporarily down a piece , but look at this , we have two pieces being attacked .

We might even play rookie one or Queenie two and get a third piece under attack .

Really wild stuff just to give you an idea .

One of the main lines and there's all kinds of different things .

But one of the main lines here is Bishop F six rookie 1 97 saving one piece .

But we take this one E six .

Bishop here we trade black castles and now white has this crazy move .

Knight takes H seven and then king takes the queen comes out , goes back over here And Stockfish actually , well , first of all , you look at this , you might say , oh , isn't Blackfish getting check ?

Well , no , because F six or F five and Blacks King is going to escape .

And Stockfish actually says the position is equal and you , you can imagine there could be some sort of perpetual check .

Maybe , you know , if you go back and forth , back and forth , back and forth .

Although this is actually a mistake because 96 now that I'm looking at it with the engineer is winning for Black .

So the point is the point is , it's very tricky and it's not clear that white actually has an advantage .

That's the point .

Um So if we go all the way back , way , way , way , way , way , way , way back here , white players decided , you know what ?

I don't really know that night C three gives us much of an advantage .

And so they kind of decided , let's just play bishop to D two instead .

And then now black doesn't really have the option to take on E four because now you can take and then you have , what's the move here ?

Um Bishop takes F seven followed by this fork and you're gonna be able to , you know , win back the night , which is actually good for white .

So um Bishop to D two , black most likely will take white will take and you get this position which OK , it's pretty equal .

Black is gonna play D five .

They have some counter play in the center , the game goes on , but it's relatively equal .

So that's kind of the story uh with the C three line .

Uh take it or leave it .

I don't really know exactly what that means for you , but that's basically what's going on .

How many people are gonna know all of that theory at the lower levels .

Probably most people aren't gonna know all of that .

But uh I wanted you guys to have that there .

OK .

So those are the three main options against Bishop C five .

We talked about the sort of the quiet line of night C three and D three .

We talked about the Evans Gambit , we talked about the main line C three .

Now I mentioned the Evans Gambit before .

There's actually a lot more to be learned here about this opening .

It's very interesting and you're gonna want to watch this video .

Next .

It's the first , first of a three part series where I actually analyzed like the top mistakes that people were making in the Evans Gambit and so tons of good information there .

Go check that out if you haven't already .

And that's gonna really explain a lot of the things that happened after this .

And so yeah , thank you guys for watching .

I'll see you in the next one .

Stay sharp , play smart and take care .