Chess Openings: Learn to Play the Sicilian Defense!
There are many strong chess openings for black against e4. These include the Philidor Defense, Petrov’s Defense, French Defense, Pirc Defense, Scandinavian Defense, Caro-Kann Defense, Hippopotamus Defense, Modern Defense, Alekhine’s Defense, and Owen’s Defense. All of these openings are extremely popular in the world of chess, but none of them are seen as the number one. The chess opening for black which gives the best winning chances is the Sicilian Defense. The Sicilian Defense has a ton of opening theory, opening lines, and opening variations. There are simply too many to cover in-depth for a YouTube chess video. The amount of Sicilian Defense theory can take hundreds of hours to teach, and a lifetime to learn. That being said, today’s video is an introduction to the Sicilian Defense, along with the chess opening systems black can use out of it. Firstly, white does not need to go into the Main Line! White can go with anti-Sicilian options like the Smith-Morra Gambit, Wing Gambit, Delayed Wing Gambit, Smith-Morra Gambit, Snyder Variation, Alapin Opening, Grand Prix Attack, and more! However, today we simply cover the Sicilian options for black against the Main Line. These include the Sicilian Dragon, Sicilian Accelerated Dragon, Sicilian Hyper Accelerated Dragon, Sicilian Taimanov, Sicilian Kan, Sicilian O’Kelly Variation, Sicilian Classical Variation, Sicilian Najdorf Variation, Sicilian Rossolimo Variation, Sicilian Scheveningen Variation, Sicilian Moscow Variation, and many more! All of these will be introduced in this Sicilian Defense chess video.
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Hey Solomon, after you finish all the openings you could do video about the best way to defeat each opening hehe
Or a video about opening repertoire, combinations that synergize etc
Thanks for the video.
22 minutes late because of school 🙁
Sicilian is nice, but hippo is better, but both are fun. Sicilan is more fun to play against because of the grand prix attack
I’m not a Sicilian player, but I want to give it a try,What is your recommendation ? Thank you
Truly amongst the best chess content on YouTube. Thank you so much for the content that you produce. I love your openings videos
amazing ❤️ thanks
Great introduction video, thank you!
Dragon or Najdorf for the attacking player…Kan or O'kelly for the positional.Myself,im not a big fan and you can lose the game quickly with a wrong move.Play it at your peril,great when you win but painful when you lose….stick to the Alehine or Czech pirc.
My favorite variation of the Sicilian Defense is the O'Kelly Variation. I suggest taking a look, it's pretty solid and rare too
Little surprised there was no mention of the Sveshnikov Sicilian. The favorite of World Champion Magnus Carlsen. The Sicilian is such a vast opening. Personally I am working on the tiamonov and the Kan. Video on either one would work. Great introduction to the Sicilian!
What a monster topic to try and tackle! Thanks for giving us a high level on the main variations. I used to play a lot of Taimanovs, and it seems to be gaining favor again.
Hey solomon, what do u think about the williams gambit in the bird opening?
DUUUUDDEEEEE…..I was hoping you were going to cover this!
Hi Solomon, as white I play the Snyder and Grand Prix. Mostly Snyder if e6 but using both covers a lot of territory. Very similar other than where the dark squared bishop goes. You covered both real well previously, so maybe those two first? I love playing the Scheveningen with a6 before e6 and your right, Kasparov is the model. Would be great to see a couple of his games showing how he plays this defense! Excellent video.
Lol it really is huge. As white I like to play it like the Ruy Lopez. So there's the Rossolimo and Moscow but sometimes black goes e6 instead of d6 and I play the Kramnik.
Thanks Solomon, another great vid!
Hey solomon! Besides my old requests could you please bring the Neo-Gruenfeld defense and the Alapin Opening?
Hi coach….this is my best game with hippo…can you review the game and tell what else I could have done…..there is an interesting move that you might like …please check
1. g3 e5 2. Bg2 d5 3. b3 Nf6 4. e3 Nc6 5. Ne2 Bd6 6. h3 O-O 7. Bb2 Nb4 8. a3 Nc6
9. d3 Bf5 10. Nd2 a5 11. f4 exf4 12. Nxf4 Re8 13. O-O Ne5 14. Nxd5 Nxd5 15. Bxd5
Bxh3 16. Rf2 Bg4 17. Bxf7+ Nxf7 18. Qxg4 Ne5 19. Qf4 Rf8 20. Qe4 Rxf2 21. Kxf2
Qf8+ 22. Kg2 Re8 23. Rh1 h6 24. Nc4 Nxc4 25. Qxc4+ Kh8 26. Rxh6#
I stopped playing the Sicilian because of the multitude of variations for white. I wanted to play the Kan variation, but it seemed like most of the time white played the Smith-Morra. Give me a reason to play the Sicilian again.
Great vid Solomon. Any chance of looking at e5 lines like the pelican and Labourdonnaise variations at some point. Cheers.
Your explanations are so easy to understand! Really good job I love it! All other videos about chess are just mixed up and spilled out and you just dont know what to do with it. This is really metodical and explaining the idea of the whole system. Really awesome stuff, great job again!
can't believe this has so few views, this is exactly the type of instructional content people look for when starting out. I'd love to see how to beat the anti-sacilian openings without transposing into the french, since when I play white I hate going into French after trying to use the alapin 😅