in this video i'm excited to share with you one of the most dangerous weapons in all of chess
one where you can have a completely winning position in seven moves and checkmating within
the first 10 to 12. i've split the video as always into multiple parts and at the end i've included
a bonus lesson to give you other options in case the position doesn't land on the board
as you would like it so we are jumping into this with the black pieces white has to play e4
we gotta go e5 very standard knight f3 knight c6 and the bishop comes out to c4 everything
else will be covered at the end knight f6 and now knight to g5 this is called the fried liver attack
and many people will think that they've already succeeded in getting a winning position because
the knight is threatening to take on f7 we cannot take back and then they are going to win material
but here you will uncork something so vicious you're going to play the move bishop c5
making it seem like you've blundered material you've gotta move your queen and lose your rook
but after knight takes f7 you are going to throw a haymaker bishop takes f2 check and now is where
the fun begins white can take back that bishop and then afterward we will look at what happens
if they play king to f1 there's a lot of branches here and all the moves have been included in
the description king takes on f2 uh and now we delay again with knight takes central pawn check
white king can go to one two three four five six squares here two of them survive four of them lose
immediately the two that survive are hiding on g1 and going diagonally to e3 although i can almost
guarantee you'll win 90 of the time if it goes to e3 another move for example if they go to f3 will
result in an absolute demise with something like queen to f6 check and the king will get hunted
down in the center of the board oftentimes the move pawn to d5 will be very useful here
and it's already basically a checkmate there is nothing here that can be done
if the king goes to f1 then the other queen move is not to f6 before that was a direct check on
the king on f3 but because the king has gone to f1 and the queen can get in the way in these
positions we have queen h4 keep the move queen h4 in mind because it's going to happen in a lot of
these positions now if something like queen to f3 attacking our knight we have knight d4 and we see
a serious issue here the queen is hit we are threatening a mate it's almost impossible to stop
we're also threatening to take here and win the rook we're also threatening to just
bring our rook ultimately the move rook to f8 is going to happen at some point as well
the two best moves that our opponents can play are hiding the king i'll start with this one
so we play queen to h4 and now the best move for the opponent is to play the move g3
this is the only move after knight takes g3 if something like h takes g3 we take with check king
moves to f1 and now we have to get our rook out of danger with something like rook to f8 the current
count of material here is that we are down three points but in a moment we're going to play d5
sacrificing our central pawn bringing out this bishop to attack the queen and also this knight
is in serious trouble as long as we can disconnect here so d5 the bishop pops out the knight jumps in
and we are hunting down this poor king with no cover if if king comes out to e3 which very
very well might happen we do not have queen to g5 check because the knight takes but again this move
queen h4 and you'll oftentimes see the move g3 here you have to take and you have to give a check
and you have to give this check because the king doesn't have a very convenient square to go to
if it goes to e2 you take on c4 and it's a fork you've officially won back both
of the pieces that you've sacrificed and this king is absolutely terrible
obviously there are other things like for example if pawn comes up
my favorite and uh one that might happen to you you uh have a mate in two queen f4 check
king to e2 and queen f2 is made you've checkmated your opponent with the black pieces and nine moves
i can't do much better with an openings video okay i'm doing the best i can i have won games like uh
like this uh it totally does happen uh and it's it's it's it's actually not the rarest thing ever
now i'm going to show you my most favorite line one that is absolutely beautiful and hopefully
convinces you to play the traxler so queen h4 and what happens if they bring their queen out i have
seen this happen they bring their queen out we actually come back with the knight what does
that do it prepares this move and we have knight d4 and queen d4 and this bishop is under attack
and i've had games go like this knight takes rook now we jump in with the knight attacking the queen
the queen's got to be very careful for example if the queen goes to g3 offering a trade we have
knight to f5 which is just a fork and we win the queen so i've had people play queen back to f1
and now absolute beauty so d5 attacking the bishop and here watch this knight g4 check
king slides over knight jumps into f2 king slides over and the beautiful clearance sacrifice
knight to e2 check queen has to take and the queen slides over to the center and it's queen d4 mate
beautifully done in the center of the board like this and the king is blocked in by its own pieces
so there is so much poison in this right but white doesn't always have to fall for all of our traps
this all begins all these problems begin right here okay and then we will even back up and i will
show you bishop takes f7 as well so good thing you didn't click out of the video king 2f1 is
considered the critical move because our queen remains under attack we cannot check the king
so the best move has to be to get the queen out of danger now white should of course continue to go
and take our rook and now we do not slow down pawn to d5 why because if bishop takes the bishop goes
to g4 and the queen is literally trapped the queen is completely boxed in the bishop is protected by
the knight and congratulations you win on move 8. so the best move is to go pawn takes d5 and then
here we jump in with the knight so we are now down six points of material this bishop can still not
be captured and here i've won a handful of games with the move c3 trying to get this night out you
go bishop g4 attacking the queen the queen's only way of escaping is to give you this check and you
play the silent killer backward night slide to d7 and here the game is lost why because for
example if they take on f2 you bring in the queen you hunt the king down if they take your knight
if they take your knight queen to f6 who is saving this king i'll tell you who
nobody nobody can stop this angry queen coming in if d takes e5 hitting the queen slide it on
forward if the pawn comes up yes snap it right off the board and deliver a check made on f2
so much power here but of course of course i have to tell you what is the best thing
to do here and the best move in this position the most critical testing line of the traxler
is to sacrifice the pawn and attack our queen that throws us for a little bit of a spin and here
i'm going to show you 26 moves of engine theory where white emerges this much better
if your opponent knows this they've either watched this video and they have the notes next to them
or they're using a computer so here we go we take with the queen the best move for white is to play
knight f7 we bring the queen to c5 attacking the bishop on c4 pawn to d3 we go bishop g4 attacking
the queen queen to d2 and the bishop slides out of danger now knight c3 we go b5 and white has
to know the only move here to give any sort of advantage b4 sacrificing the pawn to make the
queen a target we don't take the pawn we go back bishop b3 we have to play knight d5 sacrificing
the knight two different ways so we can go queen f6 and queen attacking the king bishop d5 queen f6
king g1 bishop e2 takes sorry bishop f3 first takes they don't take back because after pawn
takes there is night takes and we hit the queen then queen e3 we take the knight they take back
check here here sacrificing the knight on f3 queen h5 check king g2 queen g4 and now white
has to sacrifice the queen with queen to g3 take take take bishop d2 and we take a breath this is
what computers want to happen here they want white to sacrifice the queen and emerge in a position
where black has a queen and six pawns versus two versus a rook knight in bishop and four pawns
look i had to include this otherwise someone in the comments would have been like you never showed
this line do you think anybody's gonna ever play this against you no have i wasted like two minutes
of your time showing this to you potentially but i wanted to show you that this opening doesn't win
automatically now one other thing that we have not looked at yet and we have to look at it what
happens if they don't take on f7 with the knight the most critical move the one that i recommended
in my fried liver video what if they play bishop takes f7 check this is considered actually to be
the best move against the traxler but i'm going to show you that it's not so simple just because you
read some computer line before the game or you watched one of my videos doesn't mean that it's
easy to play it's very different to watch your video right i'm sure we all know this
it's difficult to watch a video i mean it's easy to watch a video but it's much harder to go play
all the moves right so in this position we play king to e7 so the bonus is we get to
play a mini bong cloud right to king e7 white has to get out of here with the bishop now to
one of these three squares if white doesn't if white just castles then just h6 and we win
the knight cannot guard the bishop anymore so congrats you're gonna win a piece um so the
bishop has to get out what's considered mainline here is bishop d5 which i never understood
but let's just say the bishop goes back to c4 just where it was or b3 which is what i recommend
in my video on the fried liver because i don't like that d5 can attack our bishop sorry wrong
bishop this bishop i don't like that i prefer the bishop on b3 even if the bishop goes to b3 the
next like five moves for black you can pre-move basically first you play rook f8 because you
don't want knight f7 to be a problem anymore now the best move for white is to castle because here
if white plays something like knight to c3 which is also kind of possible uh you come up with the
following plan i mean knight c3 castling uh bishop takes f2 looks good but sadly this just doesn't
quite do it with the double check uh actually white is okay here so however white decides to
set up like let's say knight c3 you will play d6 h6 bishop g4 and bring this queen around like this
so white taking our pawn opens this diagonal and the queen slides over in a perfect world
this looks something like this let's say castle d6 d3 and now we can go queen g6 if the knight
drops back it's actually us who is attacking the opponent we have knight to d4 putting pressure and
because the f7 pawn is gone in the long run what happens is the f file is also open for the rook
and the king in many cases can just slide back to d8 and be completely safe so this critical line
even though it's good for white objectively speaking is a nightmare to play the best thing to
do for white is to bring the bishop out of danger and in many cases to play c3 d4 that is what you
should do if you want to play against the traxler bishop f7 go back and pop these pawns out to d4
even at the cost of losing a pawn because the king is in the middle so it doesn't matter if you lose
a pawn in the center of the board if the king is wide open on the other side right but this is what
you would do in these systems you would play rook f8 bring the queen around like this d6 bring the
bishop and attack on this side of the board bring all of these pieces like that it's the best thing
that i can do i love how in these positions we're so active right every piece is getting involved
for what the cost of one pawn it's amazing positions like absolutely dynamite here but
that is what is considered the best way to play uh against the traxler there is knight f7 uh and
uh there's bishop f7 there's one other line that i wanted to to show you and it's actually the move
d4 so it's knight g5 bishop c5 and here there's a kind of a funny move d4 uh and the point is that
now you've cleared out space for your pieces and this is a new threat so the best thing to do on d4
if for some reason you face it is to just play d5 um if white takes then you take with the knight
and you're doing very well because the knight is now not attacking since the bishop is blocked
if white were to play here something like let's say d6 the point of which is trying
to take like this you just castle you laugh in their face this is not something that concerns us
two pieces like this are definitely going to be better um than the sacrifice material uh
of the rook i should say it's not even quite sacrifice material but you get what i'm saying
so d4 d5 you might face d4 but it's so rare but i figured that i would include it because why
not again i'm always shocked at how long some of you watch these videos like they're kind of long
i try to keep them short but i guess the end you know the content is engaging so i figured i would
just include that and if you made it to the 14th minute of this video now you know about d4d5 and
that's basically it in the last part of this video i want to show you just a few ideas and things to
think about if after e4 e5 this doesn't happen i just figured like i would include this just
because you guys are amazing those of you that make it this far now you're going to get more
information so knight f3 knight c6 they can play the scotch uh against the scotch i would of course
recommend to take and if they play pawn take on knight takes there's one really fun line in the
scotch queen to h4 uh i showed this in my how to study chess openings video it's a very tricky line
the point is of course if g3 there is this uh and if knight to c3 first of all if knight c6
the same thing and if knight c3 there is bishop b4 now this line if the opponent is extremely well
prepared they will know that the best move here is to sacrifice this pawn completely and to launch an
attack on you with knight to b5 but again i'm just giving you ideas okay that's the point of
this some aggressive ideas if you want to really just attack from the get-go um if bishop to b5
uh of course we cannot play any sort of fried liver uh but against like the spanish for example
uh knight to f6 followed by bishop c5 and d6 is completely good uh as well as for example
there's other stuff like the bird variation of the bird variation of the rue lopez um and
other things i mean in general you can always play these positions also with g6 and bishop g7
and if the opponent just plays like for example doesn't go for the fried liver and instead plays
like this i would recommend setting up with d6 and h6 now you got to be a little careful you can't
just play d6 because now it's a fried liver and your bishop doesn't get out
okay so it depends how you do it i would recommend if you like just develop the bishop to c5 first
and then play d6 and h6 what's the point you're waiting for your opponent to castle
and you are delaying it why so you can castle the other way the traxler is great you can beat
somebody in seven moves but in these e4 e5 positions if things get boring i want you to
have a backup plan and the backup plan will be h6 g5 to start some sort of big kingside attack
bring out the bishop queen and uh let's just do a few moves here just so you see what it looks like
and in a perfect world you get something like this you go knight d4 rooks come over and you launch
an attack just to make it aggressive exciting to give you a few more things to think about here as
a bonus for watching this long but the traxler is so vicious i mean did you see some of those mates
the best way to study all of this will be as usual to take the moves that i've put in the description
and practice them out make sure you're playing the queen to the right square in the right variations
otherwise you're not going to be playing perfect games you might be checkmating but that's because
your opponents are blundering rather than you playing all the correct moves there's a lot of
pgn readers out there which can read the chess moves that i've put into the description
feel free to share some of the comments with each other any analysis board on any website
will allow you to import those moves and play through them happy hunting feel free to share
a link i love seeing links to games that y'all play people tagged me on twitter uh in in games
that they played it's so much fun i retweet you know fun games and uh yeah i really had
a lot of fun making this video and the video yesterday on the uh fried liver if you haven't
watched the how to study chess openings video i highly recommend it a lot of people gave me
very very positive feedback on that video all these three together and you'll be ready to
go any suggestions are welcome in the comments for future openings you want to see take care