Sicilian Defense (How To Play It, Attack It, And Counter It)

So how do you counter the Sicilian Defense?

There are two ways:

1. Use Niche Lines Against the Sicilian
2. Choose lines that will lead to positional or tactical games

Use Niche Lines

The Sicilian Defense is one of the most complicated and difficult openings to learn and master.

It is not possible to study and master the hundreds of different sidelines of the Sicilian.

So to counter the Sicilian, what you could do is specialize in a niche line that most people playing the Sicilian Defense don’t know and use that as your weapon of choice.

A niche line of the Sicilian is a side line of the Sicilian that is not typically played.

So if you know a niche line well, you can counter the Sicilian Defense extremely well.

This is what is done at the highest levels of chess.

For example, in a game played between World Champion Magnus Carlsen and number one contender Fabiano Caruana, Magnus wanted to play a Sicilian accelerated dragon opening.

This opening is very commonly played and Magnus knows a lot of theory and made a lot of preparations for it.

Knowing this, Fabiano Caruana, played a niche variation of the Sicilian called the Rossolimo Variation.

This move is a good move of the Sicilian that is uncommonly played and can give you a nice edge against your opponent (since they are most likely unprepared for it).

You can also see this in another World Championship match, this time by the former World Champion, Garry Kasparov against Anatoly Karpov.

That time the niche variation (called the Sicilian pin variation) was played.

Steer the board toward positional or tactical lines

If you are better tactically, choose lines that aggressively attack your opponent.

For example, if your opponent plays a Sicilian Dragon, you’d want to play the most aggressive attack -- which is the Yugoslav attack.

But keep in mind:

• If your opponent is playing the Sicilian Dragon, they are probably very tactical -- since the Sicilian Dragon is the sharpest defense in chess.
• So if you play tactical lines against someone worse than you -- you could just make one mistake and lose the game.

In these cases, you may want to choose to play more positional games.

So against the same Dragon, you choose to play the more positional Classical Variation --- where you castle on the same side, retreat your Knight to b3 (which opens up the d5 square for your queen) and launch a less aggressive kingside attack.

Now let's say you are playing against an Accelerated Dragon.

This, in contrast, to a regular dragon, leads to games that are extremely positional and strategic.

The typical idea is for White to fight and keep the Maroczy Bind positional advantage over Black.

A Maroczy Bind is white pawns on c4 and e4 -- Where Black doesn’t have control over d5.

If you are:

• Playing someone more skilled positionally than you or
• You are better tactically than positionally

You could launch a Yugoslav Attack.

This aggressive tactical attack (not normally used against an Accelerated Dragon) could put your opponent in uncomfortable positions.