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You’ve been playing the wrong move your whole life…
How to beat the four knights Italian

You’ve been playing the wrong move your whole life…

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Ionbuul
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So imagine this. You just booted up a 10 or 15 minute rapid game or something. Maybe a blitz game. Doesn’t matter. So the game starts with e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6, like most games start. And rather than your opponent playing any regular opening like the Italian or Spanish, or any cool and tricky opening like the Scotch or the Ponziani or something, your opponent plays a 3 knights, and you go into a four knights. Now if you want to beat the four knights Scotch or four knights Spanish then find another blog or go to Lichess Studies. Anyway, a very common move, is Bc4. The four knights Italian. It’s the #1 move played in the Lichess Database. The move Bc4. This is what it looks like.

so that’s what the four knights Italian looks like. If you play this as white I’ll give you different move at the end, but if you’re playing black, you’ve probably been playing the wrong move every time you’ve faced the four knights Italian. If you’ve been playing Bc5 or Bb4 or Be7 or d6 or b6 or g6 or h6 or any like natural looking move, any of those moves, your wrong. And by the way this position could also be reached if you’re opponent plays the Italian and you play the two knights defense and you’re opponent plays Nc3. So the move is knight takes pawn on e4. It may seem like that just hangs a knight, but this is actually a common pattern that comes out of the opening known as the center fork trick. And if they take our knight, we play d5, forking the knight and bishop. We’re gonna talk about four moves. Bd3 is the most common, then we see if they take on d5, then bishop to b5, and then Bb3. Let’s start with d3.

So next of course we look at Bb5, which you mace the most it may face bishop d3 or bishop takes pawn, you may rarely face Bb3 we talk about it anyway. So next is Bb5.

Next we’re gonna see what happens if they take on d5.

So those were all the moves that you will face the most. Next we’re gonna enter a different variation if they go back to b3 which you probably won’t face a lot but just to know it anyway.

So there we reviewed all the moves. Next we’re gonna see what happens if they don’t allow d5. We’ll start with bishop takes f7.

That’s actually the only thing we’ll talk about beside knight takes knight because you’re up a pawn. So anyway next I’m gonna give a move for everybody who’s been playing the four knights Italian. I’ll make a blog on the Belgrade gambit. And by the way any time you recognize that you can do the center fork trick then you should probably do it. It gives you a slight advantage by winning a center pawn. This is the only time you can’t do it. It’s when your bishop is developed at the same place that there bishop is. And here’s why.

My blog on the Belgrade gambit may come soon.