Switching to Sicilian, but which Sicilian?

Not at all, because right from the beginning I was arguing that:

Exactly, that's what it is. It's cherry picking lines which look better for white instead of looking at the most common lines which paint the true picture.

Ooh, and here's another way to make White always win against 1. ... e5 using the same bogus rules:

And another:

If you play by these rules, you can do this all day long...

@GYG

The lines I picked were the most common lines, whether they looked better for white or black. Yours are not the most common lines. They are only the lines which are best for white. So your argument makes no sense.

We can do this in reverse and pick all the best lines for black.

No.

I am talking about white players playing their pet lines against black players who are playing without theory. Therefore it is totally fine to assume white is making correct moves, and black is making all the most common/ most natural moves.

If black is playing the sicilian without preparation, he will lose alot of short games against people in their pet lines, more so than in any other defence to 1.e4. That is all I have said from the very start. Which part do you disagree with?

So you are not considering the most common scenario when white is playing without theory?

I went back 2-3 pages so I could get some context and weigh in... but yeah, I can't figure it out either (maybe I'm just tired).

I never said white would "always win", but I said black should expect to lose alot of games if he is playing specialists on their home turf without theory. That is the exact same case with 1...e5, but slightly less so than in the Sicilian.

Black players can play their pet lines too or be prepared against all of these variations. You omitted all of those cases to try to portray that it's generally the case that black is always unprepared whereas white is always more prepared.

It's disingenuous.

But white needs to pick 1 line against the Sicilian, black needs to learn something against all of them.

Please stop making me repeat myself.

Now, obviously that's a false dichotomy, since every sicilian player is going to fall somewhere between those two extremes. But hopefully a sane person could understand the point I am trying to make.

I think the sicilian is a bad choice... but I'm biased because I dislike it as both colors so... what do I know.

IMO it doesn't teach good principles. There are plenty of lines with black hiding in the center and needing tactics to force counterplay or die... there are lots of lines with black falling far behind in development... it's just not an opening you can make sense out of until you're a very strong player... the only thing low rated players can do is memorize a lot and hope tactics appear... sure that's one way to play chess, but it's a way that's very uninteresting to me personally... obviously some people love it (and are successful at it).

What he's saying makes 0 sense. He's suggesting that the Sicilian is so much more difficult for black by cherrypicking lines where black does poorly while ignoring all the lines where black does better.

There are certain openings where this is simply true... the amount needed to know is heavily biased towards one color or the other.

It's also situational... if I play the king's gambit, then sure, my opponent gets to pick 1 out of a dozen different defenses, but since the KG is so rare you could argue that black is the one who should play a cop-out line like an early d5.

But if I play the KID, or pirc, well, that's going to be rough, since white is sure to be preared, and I'll have to know specific things about a dozen different setups... depending on what white choses the character of the middlegame can be completely different.

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But this may be a rating thing... low rated players may not have to think / worry about such things yet... maybe for them getting an equal position on move 10 is enough, I don't really know.

In the beginning the OP was just asking what Sicilian they should play NOT whether they should play it or not and then some annoying gatekeepers started trying to tell everyone why they shouldn't play it.

Literally no-one asked.

No. He's saying that White has many options against the Sicilian, and black can go wrong very easily if they don't know what they are doing. So, to play the Sicilian and not get into trouble early, you must analyse all of White's options. Players with White do not need to do this as much, as they have more of a choice in terms of which path the game goes down.

It's easier for Black to go wrong, that is the point. It is easier for White to play accurate moves naturally, in most Sicilians.

The sicilian is an opening where white gets to choose, yeah. There are, IDK, a dozen different anti-sicilians (or it seems like it) and then in main lines there are sometimes LITERALLY a dozen different variations so... it's immense.

What you are describing is something that is true of chess in general. It happens sometimes against the Sicilian, but the statistics show that for every time Black runs into an opening disaster, there's at least one other game where they go on to win through other means. You don't get to count only the disasters and not the successes.

And as my examples make clear, there's no shortage of ways for White to challenge Black with tricky pet lines against moves other than 1 ... c5. There are plenty of tricky gambits an e5 player has to be prepared for. Here's yet another where, with Black's most popular moves, White wins. Do I think it's a reason not to play e5? Of course not.

@paper_llama

I can't be bothered to discuss this with you because you said you dislike the Sicilian with both colours so obviously you are going to say that's it's bad to play, etc. etc.

At least you're honest about it.