A Four-Century-Old Sacrifice, Re-Armed by the Engine
Around 1610, the Italian master Giulio Cesare Polerio set down a knight sacrifice so violent that his countrymen named it after what it left on the board: the Fegatello, the "fried liver." Four centuries later, the same leap onto f7 is still one of the most direct ways to drag Black's king into the open. And the wider 4.Ng5 attack, rather than being refuted by modern engines, has been re-armed by them.
The move that sets it all in motion, 4.Ng5, looks almost like a beginner's lunge. That is exactly its value. From that moment every line revolves around a single square, f7, and Black is forced to solve concrete problems from the very first moves.
More than the sacrifice
What keeps this repertoire relevant at a high level is that it is not built on nostalgia. The romantic 5...Nxd5 6.Nxf7 line is here in full, and the once-feared Traxler (4...Bc5) is met with the clean engine-age refutation. But the real depth is reserved for Black's best try, the modern 5...Na5, where the knight hunts the bishop and the heavy theory begins.
The heart of the course is 8.Qf3 — the modern weapon, associated with Erigaisi's practice, that has quietly kept scoring after 6.Bb5+ c6 7.dxc6 bxc6. From there the main line is a razor's edge of only-moves that are extremely hard to find over the board, which is the entire point: White attacks, sacrifices, and hands the opponent impossible questions with the clock running.
The authors
The repertoire is the work of GM Baadur Jobava and GM Pier Luigi Basso, who set out their reasoning openly in the annotations: this is the Evans Gambit spirit applied to Black's other main third move — same fire, same insistence on initiative, but now updated so that the oldest attacking idea in the Italian stands up to modern engine scrutiny.
What's included:
- 12 Chapters
- 20 test positions
- Memory Booster
- To Go version of every chapter
- Video instruction
- Multilingual PGN (English, German, French, Spanish)
Variation map
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5
- 4...Bc5 — the Traxler, refuted → Chapter 1
- 4...d5 5.exd5
- 5...Nxd5 6.Nxf7 — the classic Fried Liver → Chapter 1
- 5...Nd4 — the central counter-punch → Chapter 2
- 5...b5 6.Bf1
- 6...Nd4 → Chapter 3
- 6...Nxd5 → Chapter 4
- 5...Na5 (modern main line) 6.Bb5+
- 6...Bd7 7.Qe2
- 7...Be7 — classical development → Chapter 5
- 7...Bd6 — the modern, active try → Chapter 6
- 6...c6 7.dxc6 bxc6 8.Qf3
- quiet 8th-move tries → Chapter 7
- 8...Rb8 → Chapter 8
- 8...Be7 → Chapter 9
- 8...Bb7 → Chapter 10
- 8...h6 → Chapter 11
- 8...cxb5 9.Qxa8 — the main line → Chapter 12
A matched pair
This course covers Black's 3...Nf6. Its companion, Evans Gambit for White - Top-Level Repertoire by the same authors, handles 3...Bc5. Taken together they answer both of Black's principal replies to 3.Bc4 in the same aggressive, initiative-first style.
Take up the attack
The Fegatello has survived four hundred years because it still works, and this repertoire shows exactly how — from the immortal knight sacrifice to the quiet 8.Qf3 that engines and elite practice have made lethal all over again. Add the 4.Ng5 Italian to your White arsenal and start posing the questions.