This reminds me of what a friend of me from rehab-clinic told me. Except he was talking about booze . This sounds like a confession , you are actually a dry-sicilian . Not playing it , but secretly longing for it.

@murray :

Sounds like : Mr.Nice Guy just left the building..... leaving the world wide plants and the bees in trouble ... sliding downhill ... in Aspen .

I started playing the Sicilian early, as soon as I started studying openings when a book I read described it as a counter attack rather than a defense, that appealed to my nature. I was recomended to play the Dragon variation so I bought a book on it & away I went. I still use it but have learnt some other variations along the way. It is a very sharp defence, you need to study it or you will find yourself in a world of pain, but if you study it you will be rewarded with some great games

@rmurray :

Do you know what cows are , those things that eat grass ? Well , in my country we have mainly black-on-white cows called Frisians . Big spots no dots , good for making milk .

When there is a lot of them eating,boohing and crapping in the field , I like to watch them and start dreaming a little , gazing at the cows , roming in the gloming. Now the spots on the cows are very individual and irregular . Never the same , and they form strange shapes. They look like the blobs of ink in the psychological test (Rohrschag ?) they do on ward 8. They ask you what you see in the blobs . Anyway,looking at a cow I suddenly saw the features of the face of Mohadma Gandhi and no matter how I looked at that cow , I couldn't unsee that face. Now isn't that strange ? It was there and I didn't see it , but when I did ..........

i always thought its harder to play against the najdorf, because it leaves white less choices and its forced, so that the booked up player automatically has great advantage. But then again if i have the choice i probably hang myself anyway....

Reason not to play Sicilian , Crime Section , not for children .

Dangerous stuff , better left alone.

"When should one start playing the Sicilian?"

I think right at the beginning of the game would be the best time.

QuantummKnight wrote:

rmurray wrote:

you must first master the ....skin flute.

The WHAT?

U dont know the Skin flute ???

ya well you didnt play the correct moves versus the smith mora...

lmao.

You missed 8. Nb5, preparing to go to the weak d6 square with check. (in the fianchetto variation black isn't supposed to play e6 for this reason.)

I made the same mistake playing as white in my only loss with the Smith-Morra on this site  To be fair, I'm very new at the Smith-Morra gambit and have played less than 10 games with it from the white side.

I've been playing the Sicilian as black since I started chess though, back when I was an 800. I'm now at 1400 9 months later so it can't be that bad of an opening for beginners.

+1

Probably more so than any other opening. (Myself included)

Um... what? I'm not secretly longing for the Sicilian. I don't like to fianchetto my bishops, and at least as far as I see it, you can't play the sicilian without fianchettoing the bishop that you're blocking. So I don't play it.

And that's why I play the French.

Not really the point of this example but tell me , where did I make my first mistake ? Personally I think the White position after 11.Rac1 is the standard setup in the Morra.

Thanks for taking the trouble to examine and comment on the game.

Thanks for your analyses.

Yes , 8.Nb5 looks attractive (blockade on d6)  and I'm sure I must have considered playing it because it's a common theme in the Morra. After this move Black won't be able to castle anymore , but I believe White doesn't win back the pawn and it's hard to find a follow up.

I chose 8.Qe2 because I wanted to develope my rooks asap and put pressure on the centre. I was following the rule of first completing the development and only then start making trouble. But I was also being lazy and just proceeded to play the default Morra moves.

This game is not meant to show how brilliant I am but how a mistake in a Sicilian is almost always deadly and how fast the tides can change when one player makes a mistake.

@rmurray said : the cow was sent to deliver a message.  we hope you have figured it out.

Now I (somehow) knew I could count on you , very comforting . You , the worldwide bees and plants and of course the cow. It all makes sence , not sure about who ordered Mahadma yet .... no Sicilian or Korean ... ponder,ponder,pon..

Hang on ! The bees and the plants are in trouble right , so now the cow will be in trouble too. She is eating the troubled plants and the worldwide bees don't like that,so they called somebody , not just anybody , NO they called Mahadma .... or ... they want me to make that call..... sjjjjittt ....

Got to go ... nurse Betty is on watch ... she'll take away my crayons ...

Generally it's best to start playing the Sicilian on move one. I've experimented with playing it on move two or even move three but there are always move order problems that let white get a big space advantage.

The sharper the opening the more calculation there is thats all. I exclusivly play the English attack against najdorf with a long castle and I'm always calculating things like, if I leave the knight en pris will my attack go faster than his counterplay. The best offense is a strong offense and the best defense too. I try to find a way to ignor my opponents counterattack or at least slow it down a tempo or two and my wins are pretty consistant against it when players are 200 elo better than me, because they played into my favorite opening. I'm not booked up at all though, from move 8 or 9 its all over the board with me in these lines.

Sicilian is too hard to play for me...