Four Knights Italian | Great Chess Opening for Black!
#fourknights #italian
One of my tactics when I play with the Black pieces against the Italian Game, is to play the Two Knights Defense. If White is aggressive, I'm hoping for the beginning of a potential Fried Liver Attack and transforming it into the Ponziani-Steinitz Gambit, or if White is conservative, angling for a Four Knights Italian (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Nc3).
Part of the tactical approach is directing the game down an opening that I prefer as Black! I like the Four Knights Italian as from the beginning, Black has already equalised [0.00] and has some attacking chances. Moreover, at the beginner-intermediate level, I find that White often doesn't really know how to respond to the relatively more aggressive line of theory, which on move 4, I capture the e4 pawn with a knight, they capture back with their knight, and then I fork their knight and bishop with my d-pawn (4... Nxe4 5. Nxe4 d5).
And this was the case in this game. White made what I suspect was an incorrect assumption/calculation that their best way forward was a "desperado" capture (6. Bxd5). White gives up their bishop pair and help accelerate the development of my queen into the centre of the board giving Black a firm advantage [-1.7].
White castles kingside on move 8 and so I played a provocative move with my bishop, pinning their knight to the queen. My goal, however, was to entice White to move their kingside pawns forward (8... Bh5 9. h3 Bh5 10. g4 Bg6), permanently weaking their kingside defences [-4.6].
At this point in the middle game, the position gets a bit complicated, and neither my opponent nor I saw a tactic in the middle of the board. Stockfish thus rates a series of errors/blunders from both of us related to this missed tactic.
Move 17, White made a terminal blunder [-6.8] by bringing their king forward (17. Kg2), aiming to prevent infiltration by my pieces into the weakened defences of their king. However, this placed the king onto an open diagonal.
A series of mostly forced trades later, the centre opens, and my final move (19. Nxc2) gave a double attack. My knight attacked White's rook, and there was a simultaneous discovered attack by my rook on White's queen. White opted to resign. GG!
Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/68773923995
