Italian GameC50 – C54
3.Bc4 puts the bishop on the square it wants before Black can stop it: aimed at f7, the one square in the starting position defended by nothing but the king. The modern handling is patient. c3 and d3 build a broad centre that does not commit, the king castles, and the queen's knight goes b1-d2-f1-g3 to join the kingside — the 'Giuoco Pianissimo', the very quiet game, which is a joke about how long it takes and not about how sharp it gets afterwards. The alternative, c3 followed by an immediate d4, opens the position at once and is the right choice when Black has spent a move on …d6. Two things go wrong for White here: playing d4 before c3 supports it, and letting the c4-bishop be traded off by …Na5 without having spent the move on Bb3 first.
Played by
- Magnus Carlsen — made the slow Italian the main battleground of top-level 1.e4 e5 in the 2010s, choosing it over the Ruy Lopez
- Fabiano Caruana — one of the players who turned the quiet c3-and-d3 set-up into a deep, well-analysed weapon
Model game
Carlsen – Nakamura, London Chess Classic 2011
Next: e4 — yours
