The Trials and Tribulations of a Chess Improver
Yes, Chess Improvers. The struggle is real. You've prepared some opening ideas for your first Improvers' Tournament, your chess is still shaky, you're a low elo, but you're ready. Ready for a challenge across the board. You feel good. Not confident, but OK. You know your first move if they play d4, and have an idea to meet e5. You've no clue what happens if you're playing black, but that will come when your elo starts to go up. You're like most newbies; keen as mustard, but with some skill gaps, let's say, in places. Then they open with this!
The Fried Liver Attack!
Every beginner runs into this one, and it's a doozy. At first it leaves you dazed and confused, because you wonder what kind of an opening this is. All the pieces haven't even been developed yet, but there's a rabid pony galloping towards you, trying to hammer down your defences around the king, from g5. Suddenly, your king's face goes red - you're in check! No, wait it's checkmate!! ( I mean, that's what the # symbol means, doesn't it?).
How did this happen? It's only move 9, for pity's sake. Where are the opening moves? Why didn't you get to even play one of your two shaky openings before they checkmated? And why, oh why, is this happening in all my games?
The Learning Curve
The first thing I learned from tournaments online, as a newbie, is that the curve doesn't always trend upwards. You run into stuff you definitely weren't expecting, like The Fried Liver Attack. In fact, finding out what it was called was my first stop, and since then I've been caught out with it over and over, but that's part of learning, and improving; you start out been bad, and (hopefully) improve over time. How much time? Different, I think, for different people.
Now I knew what to call this ghastly item that was gettting served up to me instead of openings I'd expected, I could face up to it, and learn ways to defend myself from an early attack by knight and bishop, working together on diagonals, focussed on my poor likkle f7 pawn. Since then, I have to return to the drawing board, as they say, regularly, as there are a few twists on this attack recipe, depending on how many pawns they have at their disposal, in the centre, and whether the queen sticks her nose into it too.
Defend Yourselves, Improvers!
Yes, be prepared, because you will meet this on the menu, if you're a beginner, or improver, and you need to work on how to respond to it. I am still at the stage of having to practice responding to it, by reviewing and replaying games where someone caught me out, yet again, with it, by putting a slightly different element in, or when my pieces were in different places during the attack. I'm getting there, 'though. Studies like these are a help, and ease the pain a little after another slap in the face with Liver. I think I'll always feel as hostile towards the Fried Liver as some feel towards The London System (but at least that's an opening, isn't it???), but I can see why it's important to learn to defend against traps when they come up. I'm working on it.
Let me know below if you've been working on it too, or run into it, or love it, or hate it, or just fed up with getting it every time you play, this opening dish that attacks the delicate beginner's palette so violently and abruptly, or maybe you're working on something else that is your personal bugbear you love to gripe about, or even if you've got your own solution to the Fried Liver, or other traps, that takes it off your opponents' menus for the day!
