The Fried Liver (Giulio Cesare Polerio vs Domenico, 1610)

A variation of the Two Knights Defence including a Knight sacrifice on f7 first appeared in a game between two Italian Masters in the 17th century. Since the sacrifice leads to a position where the Black king has to endure an attack in the center, the variation later became known as The Fegatello or Fried Liver Attack.

The exact etymology is not known. In The Oxford Companion To Chess, David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld speculated that the name implies that the sacrifice of White’s knight is like a slice of liver used as bait in a trap 1 (in the Italian language, the word Fegatello is an idiom meaning “dead as a piece of liver”).

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. Bc4 Nf6
4. Ng5 d5
5. ed5 Nd5
6. Nf7 Kf7
7. Qf3