Qh5 Against the Sicilian

Hello nerds. Now, you may be wondering what I mean by that title. After all, Qh5 against the Sicilian is a bad (if not horrible) idea that should not ever be used in a game. It just does not make sense to play Qh5 when black has not committed a pawn to e5, allowing them to play e6, stopping any potential threat of Qxf7#. But what if there was a line black does play e5 in the Sicilian? No, I am not talking about the Jalalabad Sicilian. I am talking about the Löwenthal/Kalashnikov Sicilian that results from the moves: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e5 (see below).

The line where Qh5 is possible is the line in the Löwenthal Sicilian where white captures the knight on c6. Then after 5...bxc6, white can play Qh5, targeting e5 and f7 without having to worry about black ruining the fun with e6.

What's the advantage in playing this line?

Unless you're some weird player who tries to get scholar's mate every game, there is not much advantage in playing this instead of the main line. But it is funny to surprise those grandmaster wannabe Sicilian players with a wayward queen, while still maintaining a slight advantage.

Another advantage of this line is that it requires much less theoretical knowledge than the main line. So if you're like me and cannot be bothered to open an analysis board and look at 3 or 4 lines, this is the opening for you.

The idea of this line is pretty simple: just play chess. If your opponent does not fall for the obvious traps, they will be in unknown territory whereas you would be comfortable because you are an annoying wayward queen player. 

How good is this line in practice?

Theoretically this Qh5 line should not be bad for white, but how good is this opening when used in actual games? Well I score decently with this line, with a 68% winrate in chess.com blitz and rapid. Most of my opponents do not just blunder the obvious opening traps, but there were some glaring exceptions.

I looked on the Lichess openings database and found that even a 2100 blundered the scholar's mate, which is funny because most people normally do not associate 2000s with getting scholar's mated. 

To be fair, that Nf6 move was a premove by black what's inexcusable is that some 2000s on Lichess even played Be6, completely forgetting that their f-pawn is pinned.

But what if black plays something natural and logical. Instead of the goofy variations shown above, black could play the popular but decent lines I mentioned earlier in the blog. If that happens, white just castles queenside and has good pressure down the centre and potentially the kingside as well.

I played some games with the chess.com maximum computer where it played Qh5 to demonstrate some possible ideas in this line. 

I did blunder a pawn early on in that game but it shows how crushing this line can be for white, given that white is much more prepared than black. 

I hung a pawn, then the position again. But as you can see, this opening is quite effective even if it's an annoying anti-theory side line. 

When discussing this line with @DropTheSeventh, we figured out that the best try by black is probably with 6...Qc7 followed by the potential d5 push (shown below). For this reason, Bc4 should not be played if black plays Qc7 immediately. Instead, an interesting novelty would be to play 7.Bg5.

Lastly, I played one more games against the maximum computer strength on chess.com and obviously lost, but here is the game.