Chess Basics: Fried Liver Attack

The Fried Liver attack, also known as the Fegatello attack, is an opening for White that sacrifices material to gain a positional advantage. It gets its name from an Italian idiom that means “dead as a piece of liver.” 

Let’s walk through the steps of this popular attack and examine what makes its key sacrifice worthwhile. 

The Fried Liver

A successful Fried Liver attack will result in this position:

After following traditional opening principles for the first three moves and developing a knight and bishop towards the center, White begins this attack by moving their knight to g5, adding a second attacker on the f7 pawn.

Black usually attempts to block the bishop’s access to the square with a move like d5, but even after an exchange that keeps the f7 pawn out of the bishop’s reach, White captures it with the knight, forking the queen and rook: 

This move intentionally sacrifices the knight to lure Black’s king out into the open and prevent Black from being able to castle for the rest of the game. Kings in the middle of the board are vulnerable and easy to attack, and White can immediately deliver a check – and create a fork between the king and d5 knight – by moving their queen to f3:

To escape check and defend the knight, the black king can move to e6, but White will emerge from the sequence in a stronger position, maintain their castling rights, and be able to continue applying pressure to Black’s weak king on subsequent turns.