Traxler’s answer to the Fried Liver Attack

I’ve noticed some of our Juniors, especially at Bournemouth Library, have tried the Fried Liver Attack with great success, surprising the unsuspecting, who have no knowledge about it.

Karel Traxler had an answer for it, which may help those of you who are Black and find yourself under attack.

I have listed 3 games in the GAMES menu, showing different examples that could occur if your White opponent takes f7 with the Knight, looking to be greedy forking the Queen and Rook. A more experienced player may take the f7 pawn with the Bishop, forcing the King to move and then retreating, a pawn up and stopping Black’s King from castling.

Karel Traxler (1866 in Vlachovo Březí – 1936 in Volyně) was a Czech chess master and composer of chess problems.

He is best known for the hyper-aggressive variation named after him, the Traxler Variation in the Two Knights Defense,^[1] which was first shown  against Reinisch, played in Hostouň in 1890:

Because Traxler was a Roman-Catholic priest, he rarely played chess in serious competitions. As a composer of chess problems he pursued the style of Bohemian school. He wrote under a number of pseudonyms: Anonymus z Tábora, Karel Kaplan, Vis Maior und Karel Zboněk.^[2] From 1896 to 1899, he edited, in part, the journal České listy šachové (Czech chess letters). He composed over 900 chess problems, mainly 2-, 3- and 4-move problems, but also multiple move ones, and more rarely, selfmates. With his brother-in-law, Jan Kotrč, he published a selection of 247 problems that he’d composed by 1910.^[3]

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March 13, 2019