How to CRUSH the Napoleon Attack!

#napoleonattack #openingtactics 

The curious thing is that one of my videos on the Napoleon Attack is one of my most popular videos. It seems to be popular at the early beginner level, and very occasionally, someone tries it against me in intermediate.

And just to recall, the typical Napoleon Attack involves White playing Qf3 on move 2 (1. e4 e5 2. Qf3), and then Bc4 on move 3 (2... Nc6 Bc4) to attempt a scholar's mate with the bishop and queen eyeballing Black's pawn on f7.

Straight up - it's rare to see this at the intermediate level as it is just not a good opening. Assuming Black isn't fooled by the "obvious" trick, then AT BEST, White can push towards a highly positional game where they are slightly worse than if they didn't do this silliness and just played an Italian Game.  If White doesn't play very accurately, then Black can force a queen trade and Black is slightly better in a queen-less game.

This is what I recommend to counter the Napoleon Attack as Black.  On move 3, develop the queen symmetrically (3... Qf6).

In this game, my opponent led with the Bishop's Opening but then transposed into the Napoleon Attack (1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nc6 3. Qf3). This gives a good example of how this counter works (3... Qf6) - although White technically is "fine" evaluation-wise, according to the Lichess database of lower-rated games of blitz and rapid, Black has a win ratio over White of 52% vs 42%.

As White allowed (4... Nd4), my knight now attacks their queen and the c2 square, and they only have one of two options, both of which lose tempo and the evaluation is [-0.8]. Either they undevelop the queen to d1, or trade queens.  In this game, they opted to trade queens and unfortunately, didn't see the knight's attack on c2, blundering their rook from an absolute fork [-6.5].

White is pretty much losing out of the opening and for the rest of the game, I don't necessarily play the most accurately, but simply, conservatively, traded material where possible, and moved towards a winning endgame.  Happily, I had a "killer pawn" ending - a lovely pawn checkmate on move 33. GG!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/73107955647