Tags
chess, chess games, chess tactics, fried liver, levy rozman, memoir, traxler
I’ve been playing on Chess.com for about a year and recently learned how to save animated gifs of my games. So, here are three I won last month as Black using the Traxler Counterattack against one of the most annoying openings of all time: the Fried Liver Attack. It’s quite common at beginner and intermediate levels because White thinks Black will never see it coming — which in many cases is true, and can be absolutely terrifying when you are new to the game. White sneaks a protected Knight into Black’s position on the fifth move, threatening to murder either Black’s Queen or the kingside Rook, and the winning tactics for Black are not at all easy to find. But with some study and practice, Black can prevail.
All the following games were played with five-minute timers at the 600 and 700 rating levels. My rating in 10-minute games is around 1100, but I can’t yet think fast enough to get much above 700 in five-minute games. Still, thanks to the Traxler Counterattack, I won by checkmate in 12 moves or less in these games, which is a pretty good feeling after months of being destroyed by Fried Livers.
The game above was over in eight moves. It’s a textbook example of how White can be so focused on taking Black’s Rook that he completely misses the point of Black’s Bishop sacrifice and incoming Queen. Chess.com gave me a 100% accuracy rating on this one, which made me happy. But let’s face it, White handed me this victory on a silver platter.
Below is a nine-move variation which is instructive because my eighth move was an awful mistake, but White once again was so focused on taking my Rook that he missed my mistake and lost immediately.
My Queen on move eight handed the advantage to White — I only got a 77% accuracy on this one — but the moral of the story is that many Fried Liver players at lower levels don’t understand the counterattack and can be defeated even if you haven’t yet mastered it.
The game below is a good twelve-move example of that. On my eleventh move, I missed something even better that would have been a forced checkmate in two more moves. But White played a terrible response and immediately lost.
Despite my mistake, I still got a 96% accuracy rating. I can live with that!
I’ve also played several games that went on for much longer than these and involved chasing the White King into the middle of the board and hunting him down. Although it was my fault for missing better moves that would have gained me victory in less time — oversights that are super-easy to make under the intense pressure of five-minute games — I still won by putting relentless pressure on White with check after check after check until his King had no escape.
The Traxler is fun because you come from an apparently losing position, fearlessly sacrifice an important piece (the dark-squared Bishop), then completely overwhelm an opponent who thought he had you at his mercy. Who doesn’t love a victory for the underdog against seemingly insurmountable odds? That’s good drama! It takes repeated study and lots of practice to get a feel for the Traxler if, like me, you aren’t a person who memorizes millions of variations. But the Fried Liver is so common at lower levels that the Traxler is an indispensable weapon for your armory of chess tactics as you climb the rating ladder to new heights.
Shout out to International Master Levy Rozman who demonstrates the Traxler in the video below and has a chess book coming out this October which you can pre-order now, How to Win at Chess: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners and Beyond.
As an instructive bonus game, below is an example of a Traxler I played inaccurately and still won in fourteen moves. I missed an easy three-move checkmate on move eight, and a more complicated forced mate-in-seven on move ten. But thanks to Levy’s advice, I just kept hunting the defenseless White King. Off with his head on move fourteen!
Notice that on move eleven, we once again see White being way too focused on taking my kingside Rook. Sure, he killed the poor Rook, but it was senseless slaughter that gained White nothing when his King was in such imminent danger.
My accuracy rating as Black was a paltry 78% on this one, but White only got a 51%. That seems to be typical of Fried Liver players at lower levels; they aren’t all that great, so they rely on one tricky opening to terrify other chess noobs. Arm yourself with the Traxler and watch them fall.