Escaping The Fried Liver

In this position you can play ...d5 or ...Bc5

...d5 can lead to Fried Liver

...Bc5 is the Traxler Counterattack

To avoid these wild complications, don't play 3...Nf6

IpswichMatt: You can easily avoid these "Wild complications" with the line above, except white usually plays 8.Be2 rather than 8.Qf3. Black gets all the attacking fun in these lines, and white has to play very precisely to defend.

@Twinchicky - Please expand on your post - this is the Fried Liver, how can Black avoid this if he's played 3...Nf6 ?

@IpswichMatt:

He can avoid the Fried Liver by playing 5...Na5 (The mainline Two Knights Defense) rather than 5...Nxd5? . White is put on the defending side in the Na5 lines, and has plenty of opportunities to make mistakes.

Yes, so he can! Thanks for posting - I'm not that familiar with these lines

No problem. It always suprises me how many people think that the Fried Liver is forced!

According to Wikipedia, "The move 8.Qf3?!, popular in the nineteenth century and revived by Efim Bogoljubov in the twentieth, is still played occasionally, but Black obtains a strong attack after either 8...h6! or 8...Rb8." 8...Be7 seems to have the most success in chesstempo's database.

Of course you should play something like this. The move 5.. Nxd5 simply gets a question mark, that is a bad move. By the way, the fried liver with correct play is nothing to fear from, the real problem is the lolli attack.

Here's how I avoid it.... I like playing this with doubled center pawns better than the mainline idea of playing a pawn down and with an isolated c pawn.

and secondly