An opening course for White (ECO C50)
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 is the first opening most players learn and one of the last they outgrow. The bishop takes aim at f7 immediately, and everything in the course follows from what Black does about it. Against 3...Bc5 you get a choice of three: the modern Pianissimo with d3 and a slow knight tour to g3, the old c3 and d4 main lines, and the Evans Gambit for when you want the game open. Against 3...Nf6 comes the Two Knights and the sharpest position in club chess, where 4.Ng5 hits f7 a second time and the Fried Liver is one move away. This course teaches that whole complex with the numbers attached, including the part nobody tells you: 5...Na5 is Black's main line, it holds comfortably, and against anyone who has studied, the Fried Liver never appears at all.
This course is part of your daily work.
It is the only square on Black's first rank defended by nothing but the king. The bishop on c4 attacks it on move three, a knight on g5 attacks it on move four, and almost every tactic in the Italian is White getting a third attacker there before Black gets a second defender. When you are deciding between two moves in this opening, count f7.
The modern treatment plays d3 and c3, keeps the tension, and routes the queen's knight the long way round, Nbd2 to f1 to g3, where it eyes f5 and h5. The old treatment plays c3 and d4 at once and produces forcing lines both sides have to know exactly. Neither is better. Pick d3 when you want to outplay someone and d4 when you have done the reading.
The Fried Liver gives a knight for a pawn and a black king on e6. That is a bad trade on the scoresheet and a good one over the board, because the king has to walk to safety through eight moves of checks while its own pieces watch from the back rank. Judge these positions by how many moves the defence needs to find, not by the material count.
The Fried Liver only exists because 5...Nxd5 is natural and 5...Na5 is not. The Traxler only exists because 4...Bc5 looks like a blunder. Most of the sharp lines in this course are decided by whether the person opposite you has seen the position before, so learn the refutations of your own tries as well as the tries themselves.
Learning order, one scoresheet per chapter. The coach serves review one line a day; enter any line directly when you want it now.
Six moves and no theory. This shows the square the whole opening argues about and the shape White builds around it.
One setup, one plan, and it works against both of Black's third moves. If you want an Italian that does not need memorising, this chapter is the whole course.
The forcing version. Both sides get exactly what they want, and both sides have to know it, because a wrong move order here costs material rather than comfort.
A pawn to drag the bishop off the diagonal and get d4 in with tempo. Kasparov used it to beat Anand in 1995, and theory still has no refutation of it.
Black plays 3...Nf6 and White hits f7 a second time. Tarrasch called 4.Ng5 a duffer's move and it has been scoring well for two hundred years anyway. Start with what Black should do about it.
Black plays 5...Nxd5 and now there are two ways to punish it. One is famous. The engine and Fischer both prefer the other one.
Club games that started in the Italian Game produced these tactics, and you solve every one from White's side, the seat you actually sit in. Difficulty follows your solving, the same as the puzzle room.