Sicilian

Been playing the scandinavian on black in response to e4 for the past month and a half, because just from what I've read, e5 is not a good opening for black in response to e4.  I'm convinced of that, though many probably disagree.  But anyway, I was convinced that as black you have to do something right off that bat to disrupt white's plans and not let the game fall into familiar patterns for him.  

Thus, I've been using the Scandinavian but with very mixed results.  It immediately turns it into an open game usually, but also a boring, slow, an odd one, with alien board configurations which leaves both black and white staring at the board scratching their heads for interminable lengths of time.  Then with the fatigue from all that mental effort (not to mention boredom) , even fairly competent players eventually make some blunder and then resign in disgust.  So basically most of my opponents seemed annoyed that I was playing the Scandinavian, and frankly I don't blame them.

So I knew I had to find something else.  And the Game Explorer here says Sicilian has by far the best winning percentage against e4.  I found a couple of videos on the Sicilian that were really quite excellent and have been reviewing them for the past couple of weeks. (video 1,  video 2).

Then this evening after another stupid Scandinavian game, I decided to give the Sicilian a shot for the first time.  And I won.  Admittedly, it could be because my opponent was lulled into complacency by how incompetently I was playing it to begin with.  And the game is certainly nothing pretty.  But what was interesting is it turned out exactly like the Jesse Kraii video said Sicilian games usually do.  He said that white has to strike quickly and knock black out, because if he doesn't black gains more and more mobility as the game wears on.  And that is exactly what happened in this game.

I am somewhat hesitant to pass on this sort of info to others players of comparable ability to me, but maybe its my duty to the community.

Great game Eberulf...well played. I also like playing the Sicilian in response to e4 and will definitely check out the videos.