How To Always Attack the Italian Opening

Recently I've switched from the Sicilian to 1. e5 as my main opening. While building the new repertoire I found a great way to counter the Giuoco Piano that makes attacking very likely and gets your opponent out of prep!

Note that this blog will focus on how to counter the Giuoco Piano by which I mean a setup with d3, c3 and short castles by White. If white should deviate early on by playing 4. Ng5, we can simply go into the mainline Polerio Gambit. There are tons of guides on how to play that great attacking gambit, but I've also compiled some useful lines in the study.

Ok lets get started!

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In the first phase of the opening we always want to get the same setup on the board; the moves are 1. e5, 2. Nc6, 3. Nf6, 4. Bc5, 5. d6, 6. d6, 7. Ba7

This is how it should look like:

It is crucial that we do not castle! Instead, we delay it as long as possible in order to attack the white king with moves like g5 -- oftentimes making long castles more attractive for us.

How we continue after that depends wether white plays:

• Re1 + Bb3/a4
• Nbd2 + Bb3
• Nbd2 + a4
• h3 before Ng4 works

I believe this covers every line that is played more than 10% in each position (lichess rated <1800 blitz or slower)

Here's how to handle each approach:

Re1 + Bb3/a4

If the two moves white plays before we finish our setup are either Bb3 or a4 in combination with Re1 we will go for 8... Ng4 to attack the f2 pawn and set up the first trap: Should white play 9. d4 to block our bishop instead of defending f2, we can unleash a piece sacrifice to hunt the white king and gain the advantage:

So 9. d4 is no good against 8... Ng4. Since 9. Rf1 wastes time and feels unnecessary, 9. Re2 is left as the only valid response. The key move to meet 9. Re2 with is 9... Qf6, which serves a few purposes - it brings us closer to long castle, it pins the f3 knight to the f2 pawn, it defends the d4 square, and it reroutes the Queen to an active position on g6.

They'll probably kick out the knight with 10. h3, but we simply reroute it with 10... Nh6 from where it can support a future f5 break or even jump back into g4 in the right moment. Here are good examples of both these plans in action from OTB Master games:

The f5 break in action:

As we can see, Qg6 in comnination with 0-0, Kh8 and f5 can be a strong weapon in this opening!

The Ng4 strike in action:

As soon as the King moves to the h-file, Ng4 is on the cards for us!

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If white should play 10. Nbd2 instead of 10. h3, we can immediately make use of white's blocked DSB and play 10... g5. This doesn't only apply in this scenario but is a general rule of thumb in this opening and one of the main ways to attack.
To illustrate how that would work, take a look at Adhiban Baskaran brutally crushing a Super-GM in that line!

But what do we do if the opponent doesnt't play Re1, or at least not right away? Since there are multiple different move orders for white, we need lines for at least the most common deviations.

Bb3 + Nbd2

This is the most common way to stall, and it leaves us with one of two equally good waiting moves to choose from: 8... Bd7 or 8... Qe7

I prefer 8... Qe7 since it features the most interesting and cool lines such as playing a lighning fast f5 +f4 or gambitting with g5. Va Moiseenko's game can teach us how quickly opponents crumble when met with this surprise attack:

a4 + Nbd2

This is the only variation in which the difference between a4 and Bb3 comes to light - while Bb3 aims to eventually reroute the bishop to c2, a4 is more agressive with the idea of pushing the b pawn all the way to b5 and dislodging our knight. And unfortunately this means that against Nbd2 + a4 we should not play a waiting move and try the same Ng4 stuff. There is however a great alternative, one that is not only one of the top engine recommendations, but also super rare and fantastically scoring! Not to mention that 33% of online players blunder their queen on the second next move!

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Ok, so all in all we have pretty nice lines against the most popular move orders and setups by white. A single thing is missing, and that is what to do if they play h3 before we can play Ng4, thereby destroying our lovely plans?

h3 before Re1

Luckily the answer is not very hard to come up with - h3 serves as a great hook for a g-pawn push, and that's exactly what we are gonna do. we can take advantage of not castling too early and simply play h6 and g5 -g4 without too much thought. The reason this is so effective is that once the pawn reaches g4 is has to be taken otherwise gxh3 exposes the white king too heavily. But after hxg4 we develop a piece by taking back the pawn and additionally open the g-file. This allows us to stack rooks on the g-file eventually, which might either lead to a devastating middle game attack or at least becomes an asset in the endgame (assuming the opponent defends perfectly, which they rarely do).

If you don't believe in the strenght of this approach it might convince you that it has been employed by legends like Anand or Shirov to beat players the caliber of Michael Adams (2734) !!

In this game, despite trading the minor pieces, the pressure along the g-file proved to be too high and Adams had to allow Shirov to infiltrate on the back rank, costing him the game shortly after:

Shirov also utilizes a common theme of this attack, wich is to push g4 anyway in response to Nh2 and only afterwards play Rg8 to pick the pawn back up.

In the next game I'd like to show you, Anand makes his 'weak' 2500 rated opponent Khanin crumble with ease. Khanin's seemingly natural moves fail quickly to the straightforward g-file attack and h-pawn push:

Queen Sacrifice Extra

There is a good chance you're already familiar with this trap if you wanna call it that, but I thought why not share it anyways? It's just a fun little line against an early Bg5 by white that you should know if you play the Italian as black, and it goes like this:

Outro

That pretty much concludes this blog on how to (almost) always attack the Italian. If I missed anything, made a mistake or if you have any feedback in general feel free to drop a comment!

Also don't forget to check out the study, it has some more annotated example games to learn from.

Have a great day!