Switching to Sicilian, but which Sicilian?

Then you just have to specialise in that line as well. If you enjoy it, then it's worth it.

Also, as shown on the previous page, there are plenty of ways to deviate even within the Najdorf and adapt the structure to something you're comfortable with and the opponent might not be familiar with.

If that's what someone is looking for, there are ways of doing that in the Najdorf.

i dont understand how people like gotham tell people to never play anything outside of a caro, london,stonewall, or tromp. you will never improve if thats all you play.

There comes a point where white in the caro easily gets a nice space advantage and a easy win as you struggle trying to do what gotham says to do

there comes a time where you draw most your games as white while all you play is the london

there comes a time where black can get a better position in the stonewall agianst white and you just lose

like would you rather be white here:

or white here?

whites losing by following the ¨how to win with the stonewall¨ by gothamchess

never understood gothams mindset...

Also this isn't specific to the Sicilian.

Opponents can have prepared lines in anything.

It applies to other defences as well. You can play e5 and someone could be super prepared in the Ruy. You could play the Caro and someone can pump out prepared lines in the Tal or Panov. In the French, someone could be prepared in the Poisoned Pawn Winawer or Steinitz.

whats even the point of gatekeeping, or just lisening to ¨the god gotham¨ for how to play chess

gotham teaches people to play chess the way he does, doing that will get you nowhere.

why you you think gotham loses so much?

why you you think gotham peaked at 2400 elo and sits at 2350 rn?

its because of what and how he plays

It's not specific to the sicilian, but the sicilian is the worst example by far.

There are a million sidelines that white could use before they even enter the najdorf: GPA, 3.Bb5+, closed sicilian, morra gambit, wing gambit, alapin, delayed wing gambit, delayed alapin, 2.a3, 2.Be2, 4.Qxd4 etc.

Almost all of these have 1 thing in common: if black plays all the most natural moves at amateur level he is either much worse or losing straight out of the opening.

These occur in every opening, but never as much as the sicilian. In the french and caro-kann these sorts of pet lines are few and far between. And in some openings, like the Scandinavian, they are almost non-existent.

IMO, sicilian players at the lower levels need to choose between spending twice as much time as their peers sudying openings (to learn a line against all of white's sidelines) or they can play without theory and should be ready to lose lots of games where their opponents didn't even have to think for themselves the whole game and just 'rinsed and repeated' the same trap they have used 100 times.

A scandinavian or modern defense player could probably play 1000 games and never lose like that once, but it happens all the time in the Sicilian, even at my level.

Yes, he's just teaching people to play what he likes which is either "hyper-aggressive but dubious garbage" or "passive simplistic lines".

I remember Hikaru making comments about Levy's play and why he will never become a GM. He doesn't try to play aggressively or attack against GMs. He doesn't really go after them.

There is some dissonance between what he says about how to play chess and how he plays. He says "you have to play aggressively, play gambits" but it's mostly dubious stuff which only works against lower rated players. His sound repertoire isn't aggressive at all.

My advice is don't

@GYG

Not true at all. Against a lot of those, black is simply doing very well with a typical dragon setup. This is just a normal, natural plan to revert to against a large number of anti-Sicilians.

Against Closed Sicilian/GPA black just plays a dragon setup and is practically equal out the opening. Same with delayed Wing Gambit and Delayed Alapin. It's perfectly natural.

It's true that a lot of people don't know what to do against Alapin at first, but after Nf6 or d5, black is perfectly fine and it's an equal game.

In the Caro Kann, a massive number of people are falling for this.

This line is so common and the moves seem natural for black but the position is actually pretty much losing because white is so well developed.

@MasterMatthew52

So nice of you to drop in just to discourage and put others down.

Have a nice day!

Practically equal out of the opening, but getting mated before move 20, because white has played the same kingside attacks 1000 times before.

There's no need to guess or suspect about things like this, because we have the lichess amateur database. The sicilian is much more dangerous for unprepared players AND requires much more preparation than the other defences. That's just a fact.

That's a good example from the Caro-Kann (apart from the warped definition of 'pretty much losing') but against the Caro there are only a few examples like this, in the Sicilian there are 100 such examples where black plays nothing but logical moves and resigns before move 15.

That was genuine advice. Don't play the Sicilian. There's too much theory on it and just not worth going through every variation. There's more opening with less theory that are worth playing in my opinion.

No one is being put down by that comment. Not sure where you got that from.

@GYG

This isn't true. I'm looking at this GPA variation in the lichess amateur database. A lot of the time white is trying to push through this attack pattern with Qe1-Qh4-f5-Bh6-Ng5 and it simply isn't working.

This position is the most commonly reached (after 2. ...d6 3. f4)

I'm just going through the most commonly played moves in the amateur database and black is winning 52% to white's 42%.

The Caro line is just not considered good for black and many have said that playing this way is a mistake. White scores remarkably well here.

You are discouraging and putting others down. You're being a miserable gatekeeper telling people not to learn something just because you don't like it.

It's bad advice.

@mastermattew52

i just want to bring this up real quick, just so people know not to take you seriously

@mrOpenRuy

And the top response to e4? Show it, we have to know. Let me guess...

the 4 knights italian and the Ba4?? knight attack, im dying

And as black, against e4?

Yeah, you can't really talk about Sicilian theory when you play Ba4 in the Knight Attack tbf.

yeah and look at what he does agianst 1.c5. he no longer has a valid opinion just be quiet ¨@mastermatthew52¨