Italian Gambit By BrunoPavcevic

Nowadays, the Italian Game leads mostly to nuanced opening move orders and slow maneuvering. Perfect for squeezing your opponents. But, for an opening surprise to bat them off the park, you’ll need a change of tracks. And for that, you’ll love the Italian Gambit!

With 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.d4! White sacrifices a center pawn for quick development and mounting threats.

More importantly, we face Black with difficult choices from the get-go, a common theme in the Italian Gambit.

How to take the pawn?

In case of 4…exd4, we jump to g5, messing with the f7 pawn. You’d think the simple 5…Nh6 solves the problem, but that’s just the entry to the rabbit hole!

After 4…Bxd4, we get the bishop pair; we continue by developing the pieces and building up a quick kingside attack.

4…Nxd4 is better than it seems. We play not the obvious recapture, but 5.b4!, a move so stunning that it inspired author Bruno Pavčević to make this course.

Bruno is a 23-year-old Croatian Candidate Master. As one of the most promising Croatian players of his generation, in his junior years, he got to train with GM Robert Zelčić, a former world top 100.

These days he is an economics student with an interest in web development. But he remains a well-educated player with a good instinct for sharp positions and eagerness to improve. That’s what pushes him to look for the dangerous opening ideas he shares inside.

Play your Ace on the hole with the Italian Gambit!

This course makes the Italian Gambit more dangerous than ever, mixing its fast pace with cutting-edge theoretical analysis from the strongest Italian players in the world: the engines!

But the merits transcend the strength of White’s initiative:

🧠 Psychological value. When most opponents play their usual moves by hand, your 4th move wreaks havoc on the board. Talk about shaking them when they’re numb!

🛠️ Practical value. You’ll catch off guard almost everybody. That usually means a time advantage, but with natural moves often landing Black in trouble, there’ll be easy wins to grab along the way.

💪 Objective strength. Even if Black survives the first 20 moves, your position’s firepower will ensure lasting pressure and clear plans to deliver the final blow.

📚 Positional education. This course is perfect for getting exposed to dynamic chess as the relative value of pieces, sacrifices, and activity, are recurrent themes.

Add to that the ease of study! With this course, you’ll get 115 short and easy-to-learn trainable variations, as well as copious explanations on the final position and how to play from there.