Category: Training

Posted on

Rooks and Kings: Fried Liver Attack

Fried LiverThe Rooks and Kings groups will be reviewing the Fried Liver attack at this week’s meeting.

The Fried Liver Attack, also called the Fegatello Attack (named after an Italian idiom meaning “dead as a piece of liver”), is a classic chess opening. This colorfully named opening is a variation of the Two Knights Defense in which White sacrifices a knight for an attack on Black’s king.

The Fried Liver has been known for many centuries, the earliest known example being a game played by Giulio Cesare Polerio around 1610.

The Fried Liver Attack is a super aggressive opening that derives from the two knights defense in the Italian game. White looks to sacrifice his knight on f7 so that he can take initiative and start a great assault against the black king. Black has to be on his toes and has to play very careful or else he will find himself checkmated very fast.

Posted on

En Passant

en_passantEn passant is a special pawn capture move that can only occur immediately after a pawn moves two ranks forward from its starting position, and an enemy pawn could have captured it had the pawn moved only one square forward. The opponent captures the just-moved pawn “as it passes” through the first square. The resulting position is the same as if the pawn had moved only one square forward and the enemy pawn had captured it normally. The en passant capture must be made at the very next turn, or the right to do so is lost.  It is the only occasion in chess in which a piece is captured but is not replaced on its square by the capturing piece.

The en passant capture rule was added in the 15th century when the rule that gave pawns an initial double-step move was introduced. It prevents a pawn from using the two-square advance to pass an adjacent enemy pawn without the risk of being captured.  Allowing the en passant capture, together with the introduction of the two-square first move for pawns, was one of the last major rule changes in European chess, and occurred between 1200 and 1600.

In today’s chess club meeting, we showed a Chesskid.com video that explains the en passant rule.  You can view that video here:

Chesskid.com en passant video

Posted on

Knight Shadow

At Friday’s club meeting, we showed a video on achieving checkmate with only a King and Queen.  The Queen is used to drive the opponent’s King into a corner by using the Knight’s shadow technique. Care must be taken to leave some room for the opponent’s King to move, to avoid a stalemate position. The King then drives up the board to support the queen in the final checkmate move.

There is also a good article on Wikipedia that describes checkmate with only a King and Queen.