King Pawn Openings: The Giuoco Piano

One apparent weakness that any player will easily notice in both the Center Game and the Scotch Game is that of bringing out the Queen Pawn a bit too early. Though doing so has its own advantages, such chess openings also exhibit the fact that that strength would easily become its own undoing. The Giuoco Piano is a King Pawn opening that takes this strong move a step further.

The Giuoco Piano opening will start as: 1 P - K4, P - K4 2 Kt - KB3, Kt - QB3 3 B - B4, B - B4

The Giuoco Piano opening will also take advantage of placing a Pawn on the Q4 position but will delay doing so (unlike the Center Game and Scotch Game king pawn openings). This opening devise a plan to place a possible replacement Pawn just in case there should be an exchange in the early moves of the opening thereby retaining a two-Pawn center. The idea is to secure that center later on and use it as a heavily fortified train crushing the enemy from the center.

An example of a common progression of moves for the Giuoco Piano would be the ones presented below. You'll find other variations of the said progression but you will encounter the ones mentioned here as a rather common set of moves used to demonstrate how the Giuoco Piano works.

The said common opening progression is as follows: 4 P - B3, Kt - B3 5 P - Q4, P x P 6 P x P, B - Kt3? 7 P - Q5, Kt - QKt1 8 P - K5, Kt - Kt1 9 O - O, Kt - K2 10 P - Q6, Kt - Kt3 11 Kt - Kt5, O - O 12 Q - R5, etc.

Like the other King pawn openings, Black either has to go for a strong point or to mount a counter attack to come up with a good reply to White's rather strong offensive. A more effective option for Black, given this matter, is to launch a counter attack. But, even that being as a given in this opening, there are players who would rather take on a bit of a quieter way of handling this situation by sticking with a strong point method.

If Black will dig in his heels firmly on the center then White has two options to choose from at that point. The first one is to weaken the defenses on Black's King Pawn at the center, and forcing Black to go for the exchange, which is ideal for White in the first place. Second is to maneuver White's pieces, especially the Knights, to strong outpost-like positions supported by White's center Pawns (e.g. Q5 or KB5).

The Giuoco Piano takes the principles behind the King Pawn chess openings a step further. It delays bringing out a Pawn to the Q4 and mounts a strong offensive later on.