sicilian defense as a main weapon

often time, a beginner player have played a random opening they had ever learned and wanted to perform as much book opening as possible in response of different opponent, at the same time they might relatively not master it but getting confused by a bunch of possible line variation.

another problem is that they will get frustated when playing againts stronger and experienced player with a good counterplay. by the way, suppose the one learn a several opening lightly and managed to learn sicilian defense deeply as a main repertoire. what if he reply another openings with sicilian defense only and manouvering tactically after the development regardless premature attack or forced by gambits. is sicilian defense still relevant and if not, what is the type of openings that unapplicable or logically will get sicilian's in trouble? thanks.....

You can't reply with the Sicilian defense to a non e4 opening. If you do, it is called something else.

I think players below 2000  OTB would do better playing something other than the sicilian(s) as their main defense to 1 e4 . 

So, practically we cannot apply sicilian defense to a non e4 opening, is that right? What about transpose?

If it seems to be irrelevant, what is typically the most flexible opening to learn?

Its very often i met e4 and d4 openings in my games and and sometime i did a wrong move order againts its variant. In fact, i just being confused which one to learn first.

Reb wrote:

I think players below 2000  OTB would do better playing something other than the sicilian(s) as their main defense to 1 e4 . 

if that the case, as an experienced what would you reccomended?

Many people will say only play e5...however you answer them by beating them with the sicilian!

Probably true, especially if the player might be missing that Black may need to equalize first before looking to employ a weapon.

But even lower rated players probably need to test out some Sicilians, if only to get a feel for facing them when opening 1.e4. Maybe working on understanding relatively more straightforward variations of the Dragon or Scheveningen is the way to go. Possibly also with little expectation.

Personally, starting out with a French, Caro-Kann bias hurt me in the Sicilian. Not so much on the Black side but getting a comfortable feel from the White side.

Why? Below master level they'll just be playing against 2.Bc4 most of the time and get equality by move 4.

The reason why is simple . The very areas in chess you need to be good at in order to win on the black side of sicilian(s) is where sub 2000 players are weakest =  endings / tactical complications and defense of difficult positions . I started out playing sicilians as a 1200-1300 player and was being slaughtered . I abandoned the sicilian and only came back to it many years later and have had better results with it as black after breaking 2000 barrier .  I dont think my experience is unique . 

Same Reb, but instead of stopping I started playing every opening on earth with black and white

Interestingly, NM Reb mentioned sub 2000 improvement areas of endings, tactical complications and defense of difficult positions for good Sicilian black play.

For just those improvements, I played an enormous amount of practice and skittles games with the Winawer French at one time. The unbalanced and often relatively open positions seemed to help and they also seemed to help (how much is hard to tell) as I gradually moved into playing the Sicilian.

Don't worry about openings yet. In fact try to get into the same kind of position everytime. You have to learn pattern recognition and getting the same kinds of positions will help you.

If you want to improve as fast as possible you have to find out why you lost. How? Simple. Go over your lost games.

So lets say you went over 5 last loses and you find that the reason you lost is because you didn't see the opponents threats. So what does that tell you? It tells you, you have to train seeing threats.

How? Find positions, any position will do but why not start with tactical positions because here you know there is a tactical shot. What to look for?

Well you could look for checks, captures, threats but lets see if we can get more concrete in our approach. 

1. Material.... if one has more material, that part will try to exchange pieces.. if one has less material, that part will try to exchange pawns.

2. are there pieces under attack? Doesn't matter if they are defended, if they are attacked, make a note of it. Because if a piece is a defender of one piece then it is tied up and can't do other jobs... or may it can but it can become overburdned. 

3. look for pieces( also pawns) that aren't defended. If those exist, then you have something you can attack.. maybe it will take some moves to make it happen.

4. the king! is the king safe? the most important piece needs safety! Bd3 is attacking h7, but the king is defending it. You move the Rf1-f3-h3.. haha! now two are attack h7! But then Nf6 is played.. ok two attack, two defend.. You play Nd2-f3-g5. Now I've got you! Ng5, Rh3, Bd3 are all attacking h7 and black has no more pieces that can help.. black plays g6. No problem! g6 we can attack with a pawn.. you play f4-f5.. you get the picture?

5. do this for both sides.. because your opponent has evil plans for your army and he wants to kill your king too.

Ok so go through all those and with each of these you have to calculate.. so lets say your king position is attack by a Ng4.. You could play h3 and you think he has to play Nf6. Problem solved, right? Maybe. But what if he plays h5. yes you can take the knight but then he plays hxg4 attacking your knight on f3. No problem, you move the knight to h2.. ah but now comes Qh4! And you're in trouble. See what I mean? These are the things you should calculate. 

It will be difficult in the beginning. But! Learn after the game, find out what you did wrong and try to find out wha tyou should have done.. learn from mistakes! That is how to get better so you don't repeat them.

Good luck!!

The Open Sicilian isn't all that common amongst club players. Below a certain level if you play the Sicilian you're basically playing against 2.Bc4 or another anti-Sicilian.

And when the Open Sicilian makes its rare appearance they seem to be doing fine. I have a friend on here UnseenAcademicals who is rated 1402 and playing the Sicilian Pin and getting equality against Open Sicilians in all of his games because they're going like this 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 Bb4 6.Bd3 Nc6 7.Nxc6 or White is playing dubious in some other way that gives Black equality (or even a +) like 6.Bg5.

I personally have been playing the Sicilian Dragon since I started chess. I've never played anything else against 1.e4, and all my Dragon games have made me stronger in exactly the areas you say, all the defensive positions where I'm hanging by a thread, the imbalanced endgames where I've made a rook sac earlier on c3 and have some pawns for a rook. Also its made me a calmer player in the face of what looks scary. So you can say people need these qualities to play the Sicilian or you can say that playing the Sicilian will help build these qualities in people.

I believe there is nothing wrong with anyone at any level playing the Sicilian. Possibly the only argument against it I see is that beginners shouldn't study much opening theory but I've actually found you don't need it, as you get better you need to add the theory but if you're just playing people nearly equal to you it's likely they don't know anymore theory than you do. For example, in the first year I was playing chess half my Yugoslav attack games went 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Be3 Bg7 7. Qd2  which of course allows Ng4 with a good game for Black right out of the gate.

Dream on - you can never force this!

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5! (Far, Far, FAR STRONGER than 3.Nf3 - Just like how the way to refute a gambit is to accept it, the way to beat Black's defense is to go head-on with it, not play some stupid "Anti" line, like Anti-Sicilians or Anti-Benonis, what the 3.Nf3 lines are.  Like Saturday, in my one game as Black, I faced an Anti-Sicilian - Moscow specifically, which is 3.Bb5+, and mauled him - he was about 2300).

What it boils down to is, you are going to need to learn 2 different openings, one against e4 and one against d4, and like Reb has said, at your level, you shouldn't be playing the Sicilian for many reasons:

- Critical knowledge of tactics and defending complicated positions

- Having opponents that don't know anything about the opening anyway, so when you try to play a Najdorf, and he goes out of book on move 7, what good is it going to do you to memorize reams of Najdorf theory?  None!

So instead, you should stick to opening concepts.  Control the center, gain space, don't move pieces multiple times in the opening unless forced to, etc.

This means playing either 1.e4 or 1.d4 as White (don't even remotely consider the other 18 legal moves for now), and 1...d5 against 1.d4 and 1...e5 against 1.e4.

Why? I play only c5 on 1.e4 and i'm happy.