The Darker Side of the Sicilian

Hey y'all,

I began as a devotee of Fischer, playing strictly 1. e4 as White, the Sicilian Najdorf as against 1. e4, and the King's Indian Defense against 1. d4.  In any case, I have recently moved away from the Najdorf, but still want to play the Sicilian.  I have been playing the Kan with good results but I like the sharper lines of the Najdorf but was driven away purely by the 6. Bc4 lines White can play.

When you want a sharp battle, what approach do you take as Black?

I find it a tad ironic that you model your opening play after Fischer, but don't like the white variation against the Najdorf that bears his name.  6.Bc4 is the Fischer variation.

Now what to play?

The Kan is flexible and can transpose into almost any other Sicilian, but it's not super sharp.  The Scheveningen variation is similar, although the e pawn goes to e6 never e5, and black almost always plays a6 as well.  Bc4 doesn't seem to make as much sense against e6.

If you enjoy playing the e5 pawn break in the Najdorf, why not just play the Sveshinkov.

Wango is right. I play Sveshnikov, too. I didn't lost a game as white or  black. Of course sometime evrobody lose, but this sistem suits to me. I researched it much. I have a book by Sveshnikov caled Sicilian defence, it helped me a lot...

The Sveshnikov is a pretty fascinating system. In my experience (10 games - I know, not a lot, but hey), if you follow database main lines, it usually seems to turn out that almost -any- deviation from the main lines by your opponent is a hilarious tactical blunder. Your pieces always seem perfectly poised to take advantage of mistakes.

The Kan is nice and solid, but a little samey. It's a good system for bullet games since your opponent will have a tough time making complications against such a solid setup.

The Dragon is pretty sharp, don't play accelerated or hyper acclerated though