To play the Sicilian

I decided I wanted to add the Sicilian to my repertoire as black.  I was wondering if you guys (and girls) could help me with this.  I know nothing about the Sicilian, except that is the most successful and popular response to 1. e4. 

Some questions to answer:

What are the main and most commonly played lines?  What are the best lines?  What lines should be avoided? 

What are the "keys" to the Sicilian? :

-what are the "right" squares for each piece?

-what is black's main plan/attack?

-what is white's main plan/attack?

-what books should be considered?

-anything else important...

Thank you very much,

beebejoe

Check out: http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=siscillian+defence

What are the main and most commonly played lines? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Defence ;)

What are the best lines?  What lines should be avoided? 

Lines that fail tactically should be avoided, naturally. Otherwise, it's a matter of taste.

What are the "keys" to the Sicilian? :

-what are the "right" squares for each piece?

It depends on the variation in question, really.

-what is black's main plan/attack?

In the open Sicilian, trading the c-pawn for white's d-pawn is a key plan, as is using the open c-file.  Black usually castles short (O-O). 

-what is white's main plan/attack?

In the Open Sicilian, white often plays for quick development, often O-O-O with an attack on the black king. In other lines, white's plan is different.

-what books should be considered?

I don't have experience with any books, but I'd recommend checking out some articles and experimenting to find a line you enjoy playing, and then picking up a book on it.

hi. even i have added sicilian as my defense against e4. and it is the most successful one for me also. i think dragon variation is the the most dangerous but in it white castles 0-0-0 and attacks on the black king side.

The Sicilian is not so much a defense as it is a family of defenses.  They all start e4 c5 of course, but from there you have a boatload of named variations and sub-variations to choose from. The Sicilian is popular at both high levels and among amateurs both because it scores well and because it produces complex games of attack and counter attack with fewer draws than some other systems.

That is the good news.  The bad news is that many of these lines have very critical theory, meaning if you don't know what you are doing you can get blown off the board.  The whole idea of the Sicilian is to create an imbalanced position from the very start to generatechances for counterattack.  But if your play is inexact, sluggish, or otherwise muddled, white can overrun your king side before you know what happened.

Personally, I don't play the Scicilian from either side of the board.  Even if I did, the questions you are asking are beyond the scope of a forum post of any sane length due to the huge number of systems you can run into from both sides of the board. If you want to get your feet wet I would say grab a copy of Fundamental Chess Openings (FCO) and dig in.  Good luck.  I don't envy the work you have ahead of you.

The Sicilian is a jungle, and each variation has it's own characteristics, traps, and pitfalls.  You might try upgrading your membership to diamond to view some of the videos available here.  It may help to have a GM or IM explain it verbally, rather than invest in a lot of books that may just confuse you.  Good luck--I play it too, and I'm forever learning more about it.

OK...so which variation would be the easiest to learn?  Or are they all equally difficult?

Trying to learn any of them will likely result in a disaster at your level. Stick to more logical openings such as 1...e5 and work on tactics! Wait till you are 2000+ in turn based play before taking on something as theoretical and complex as the sicilian.

If you must play a sicilian, I recommend the accelerated dragon. It is far less volatile than the Najdorf, dragon proper, or Sveshnikov. The Maroczy bind is a big pain, but assuming you are playing people around your rating they probably won't know much about the white side of the Maroczy, so you should be okay.

its a big task you are asking. i was in the open sicilian course that danny rensch on chess.com arranged. there he explained us ideas and themes of the english attack from whites perspective. it took 2-3 hours each week for 12 WEEKS and remember that was only ideas and themes. we got a database we studied outside the lessons as homework so we could learn lines so no time in the lessons was used for that.