The Sicilian Four Knights: A good practical opening?

@pfren thx for the Bc5 line. Seems like a good idea. To be honest my stomach hurts after the mainline with Bb4 where white forces me to give up the bishop pair with a3. With bc5 i don't have to exchange it.

@eehunt94 thank you too! That maneouver you're talking about (Ba6, Da5+) Can it be played directly after Ne4?

Maybe it is premature because White didn't move his king's bishop yet. But does this tempo matter?

@eehunt94 thx I'll look it up.

What is the idea of Rb8? At first glance I can see that the b2 pawn is attacked so the bishop cannot be developed without a pawn move. Maybe black wants to provoke b3 which would weaken the dark squares like 8. ... Qc7 as suggested by eehunt94. A combination of both ideas could be interesting. Rb8 seems like a useful waiting move to me.

All in all I like the positions that arise in the four knights. They aren't so ultra-sharp like some lines in the najdorf (I recently saw some najdorf-games from MVL. It's just insane if you look at the analysis afterwards. The funny thing is that the games ended in a draw but the analysis the forced lines didn't appear on the board because both sides were able to avoid them.)

What I'm wondering is, was that all prepared or do they figure/calculated some of the things over the board. Because the forced lines in the analysis/sidelines are just crazy.

That's why I play the four knights with quite decent results except against strong opposition. Most of tournament games with Ndb5 which aren't that many I lost horribly.

Anyway thanks for the nice input. I got some new ideas and I'll try to improve my play in the main lines especially that line with Bc5 and the one with Rb8

The Sicilian Four Knights is a very good system,from the practical point of view.Another warning is that black must know what he is up to !Here is a sample of anallogous variations.

 I can imagine myself playing 8...Rb8 and losing because I don't know what I'm doing. What's wrong with 8...f5 here as played by Lasker? The engines don't like it but ehh...

The engine likes the queen trade but maybe I need to leave it on for a day or something because almost no one is trading queens. Xiangzhi Bu won a game here albeit against a then much lower-rated opponent:

Interesting! I guess the only other move that I'd notice is 6.a3 since it's a cheeky way to avoid theory.

After 6. a3 I would consider to play 6. ... d6 to transpose in to the main lines where white wasted a tempo on a3. Also pushing 6. ..d5 immediately is possiblyy an option.

I havent played as extensively as you all and not very much at all in the past 10 years or so. So I will offer my amateurish opinion in hopes i could learn a bit. My approach to the Sicilian is to avoid allowing black to exchange a wing pawn for my center and opening the C file. Most players i encounter on here play 2...d6 which i usually respond with the conservative 3.Be2. I think the kingside pawn movements by white in the four knights is a quite natural response to queenside concentration by black. Educate me.

@Samhain1966 Can you explain a little more, please? I'm not sure whether I understood everything you say. As far as I undestood you said to two things:

• You avoid playing the open sicilian by not playing 3. d4. For example: 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Be2. 
• The second thing you said which has if I understood correctly nothing to do with the first one since the sicilian four knights requires you to play 3. d4. To be honest I'm not quite sure about  what you are trying to say because in most of the lines mentioned above black actually plays in the center. Maybe you can clarify a little bit.

I have question: You're right about the transposition but it's a bad version fort white, isn't it?

White is a tempo down because of a3.

Yes it's an unusual and possibly rather weak variation, which is of course why black should transpose to it.

I play e6 a6 Sicilians although I start from a 2. ... a6 move order. I've noticed that other players on Chess.com are starting to do that too. There's even one in the same group as me in a tournament I've just started to play in. When I see white play a3, it's like a red rag to a bull. It's just asking for ...b5, ...Bb7 and ...b4, preparing to recapture with the f8 bishop, which would still be on f8 ... thus no wasted moves for black. Black is often better by this stage, which is why many players prevent it by a timely a4. Hence a3 is very much a complete waste of a move.

There are still players who believe that the best course of action for black is ....e5 from the O'Kelly. This is rather weak. Against a strong, positional player, black would find his forces cut in half by his own pawn structure and instead of having two very strong bishops, one of them, the dark squared one, would be weak, whether it's inside or outside black's pawn chain. Why deliberately give up the prospect of two good bishops and such a flexible, fluid position, in order to play a system that some GMs mistakenly think is correct, simply because black can just survive? I think that, very often, GMs are the victims of their own tactical ability to survive in sub-par positions. They should perhaps pay more attention to positional aspects and they'd be better players. Certainly, they can be the worst people to teach chess by example, because most others don't have such a well-developed tactical sense, so they need to keep positions relatively simple rather than trying to use complex systems developed by GMs, for GMs. 

@Optimissed You play a6 on one move 2. My question is what is your idea behind a6 on move 2. Is there any move order trick?

Since you don't plan to play e5 after d4 cd you have probably another plan in mind.

3.Be2 is fine.