What to do against closed Sicilian. ANY STRONG WEAPON??

Black is not supposed to have strong weapons against White playing solid in any opening. You must be patient.

Dragon setup is good, very very good. To be honest, closed is very very solid. Just choose a good,easy system and play through it. GM Daniel naroditsky has some good ideas.

Refer games or somethin'

As black I've been experimenting with a quick b5 as in playing c5 Nc6, g6, Bg7 then immediately Rb8 and b5-b5. So far it's been good and different from usual stuff like the Botvinnik setup as black [which is solid but less exciting]. Bill

Watch Miodrag Perunovic’s YT video on Closed Sicilian as Black. Essentially, c5, copycat till move 5, then (depending on lines which I haven’t memorized yet) either go e6 Nge7 or Nf6 Nd7, after you play one of those, go in with Rb8 b5 a5 b4 and play for the Dragon bishop, queenside counterplay, and a little bit of smart defense on your kingside. Against some variations, Botvinnik setup is decent too.

dragon with early e5 is annoying to counter as closed sicilian with white.

Some Dutch Defense variations might give you some ideas to explore

Hear me out on this:

2. ... a6

I used to play the closed Sicilian back when I was better, and I had a game where someone played this. I got DEMOLISHED, and ever since, I now respect any sort of a6 Sicilian, especially this one, and the Kan (both of which are the main variations I would play if I ever DO decide to play the Sicilian.

Basically, Its a constricting set up. It completely blocks any business on the b5 square, which is a pretty important square where white will sometimes put their bishop. On top of this, black will likely play b5 later, further constricting, and might even fianchetto their bishop and develop their knight. Then again, I forgot a lot of the plans, and its been a while, and I recommend studying it with some sort of analysis board.

Im a 750 tho soooooooooooooo IDK do what you will.

i'm beating more sicilians with smith morra gambit than they're beating me with minimal study. if I could wrestle the theoretical nightmare paulsen, kan, pin, & fianchetto etc. transpositions, I could seriously kick butt, but i'm happy just PLAYING IT right now with more important black repertoire revamping and adopting double danish/2x goring instead of king's gambit.

if you like tactics, smith morra is NICE. most players accept it too, which is also nice

THANKS Italy!