A common Sicilian game

Alright group. I'm looking for some ideas. Although I've never seriously studied Sicilian Defense in much depth, lately I have been experimenting with some Bobby Fischer-like ideas. The following game is a typical game that I've encountered.

The thing that I don't like about White's position is the light-squared bishop. It's rather useless. I do like, however, that I can get one of my knights to the king side pretty quickly. How would you proceed as White? Should White castle king side or queen side? What ideas are good if White castles queen side? If White castles king side? I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

Yes my friend... this is the Najdorf favored by Kasparov!  There is a ton of theory on this and I am just studying it from white's persepctive myself.

7.  I think f3 isn't played this early... right now black played e6 so you don't have to worry about protecting g4 (because your queen is hitting it).  if black played e5 then of course that loses a tempo and pretty much secures d5 for you. f3 also leaves the g1-a7 diagonal open really early.  Some folks castle first or go ahead and play Bb3 (instead of allowing white to force the move).

9. ...b5? It seemed like black was just copying moves.  I would probrably trade off the knight here and make him waste another queen move.

Plans.  I think my plans here would center around either 1)  winning the d6 pawn 2) securing d5 3) castling queen side and pawn storming or 4) a combination of all of these.  An IM told me that in any sicilian game it is pretty much white's initiative against black's superior structure.  I think the immediate plan should be Nxc6 (forcing the queen to move again) followed by a4!  If b4 then Ne2 going right back to Nd4! or course we want him to play e5 lol.

I actually searched my old database here and found a game with that continuation where Vietnamese IM Nguyễn Thanh Sơn beat Mongolian GM Dashzeveg Sharavdorj.  Check it out

i prefer white to castle king side in this situation because black has already mounted a two pawn attack on queen side and theres no tell how good a game black has at this point

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Very good point.  I guess b4 can be very annoying too.   I will become a race perhaps to see who can disrupt each other the fastest.

o-o-o, or g4 to get a king side attack!

Thanks guys. I have been using these ideas in short games. I like to try them in short games, because over time it helps to reinforce the ideas without a lot of move memorization. As I played this over the past few days, I would encounter situations where my pawn rush on the king side would be pretty strong, but eventually I would run into two main problems.

Problem number 1: After I started pushing king side pawns, Black's knight would end up on h5 making it difficult to break through. I deal with that problem by pushing my h pawn to h5 before I rush the other pawns.

Problem number 2: Even after the 'knight on h5' problem is dealt with, I still can't think of the correct order to push the pawns for maximum results. By the time I reach this point, Black has a pretty strong attack on my queen side. I agree with Pete (Politicalmusic) when he says that this game turns into a race to the opposing king. Lots of fireworks! In a sense, positional play is abandoned by both sides. Black, however, has somewhat of an upper hand mainly because of the open c file which he dominates. White has to spend time opening up a lane to Black's king. The winner is usually the player that plays a well-timed sac or gives up a pawn to gain a tempo.

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You pretty much just wrapped up why the Sicilian is black's most popular opening lol

 

"Black, however, has somewhat of an upper hand mainly because of the open c file which he dominates. White has to spend time opening up a lane to Black's king. The winner is usually the player that plays a well-timed sac or gives up a pawn to gain a tempo."  From a pure endgame standpoint, black is usually better too...  I'm going to be studying different attacks too so we definitely should share some ideas.

Oh, I forgot something.

In an earlier post, Pete said:

"7.  I think f3 isn't played this early... right now black played e6 so you don't have to worry about protecting g4 (because your queen is hitting it)."

 

This has been a great help! I've replaced 8. f3 with another tempo loser 8. h4?! Why? I intend to eventually play h5 anyway. At some point, I still play f3, because it supports e4 and helps with the coming pawn rush.