Should I learn the Sicilian. If so, which sicilian should I learn first?

I have been playing chess for 2 years now and I am a 1700 OTB. I played the caro-kann up until this point bought me great success. My friends are telling me that I should start playing Sicilian. Should I learn Sicilian? If so, which Sicilian should I learn first?

You should learn the najdorf. If you learn your theory you will acquire a reputation of prep monster. I'm 2000 FIDE and people in my region fear my prep so they always play really bad sidelines just to avoid it

Thanks I'll look into it

The pizza version

Which do you prefer?

I would suggest to stick with the CK to accumulate more experience and to avoid changing your handle name.

With that said, I recently switched to e6 Sicilians with immediate success from d6 because it’s more flexible and logical at the club level and even online, anti-Sicilians are popular with odd transposition that involves e6 structures anyways.

If you do force d6 against some anti—Sicilians, you risk tripping over yourself early in the game or wasting a tempo to go d6 before e6 either to blunt a bishop or desperately fighting for squares. Certain lines you want to push d5, so how do you know to time that? One shot or two shots? 

If your hung on the Najdorf, Dragon (rarely played or avoided in e6 pawn structures), Kalashnikov and Botvinnik System pawn structures that involve d6 or e5 (Opecensky was my mainline), you also need to learn how to play with a backwards d pawn and square weaknesses or strategies on f5 and d5; if you don’t fully follow what I have just written, go with the e6/French Sicilian.

Lastly, you may get opportunities to transpose to the Najdorf anyways depending on your opponents play so you won’t be deprived.

My personal favorite Sicilian line (with either color) is the Najdorf... but if I were asked "Which variation of the Sicilian should I start with, in order to get my feet wet?" I would suggest one of the e6 variations of the Sicilian. Either the Kan, or the Taimanov, or the Scheveningen...

Should you learn the sicilian? 

Well, are you unhappy with the caro kann? Because if the answer is no to that question then there's no reason to switch. Although if you would like to play the sicilian I would suggest something with a more narrow path and less structural transformations like the kalashnikov or scheveningen.

@1

"I played the caro-kann up until this point bought me great success." ++ So stick to it.

"My friends are telling me that I should start playing Sicilian." ++ They are wrong.

"Should I learn Sicilian?" ++ No. If you do, you will lose more.

As you've had great success with the Caro, why not add a few more lines to make preparation against you harder instead of completely changing. Eg if you play ..Bf5 classical, keep playing it but also add ..Nd7, play both ..c5 and ..Bf5 in the advance etc. 

This way you retain a lot of the general knowledge you've built on the positions but shuffle the theoretical lines. Also this can be done step by step, you don't need to study your 2nd lines all at once.

Now compare this to switching to e.g. the Najdorf. At a very bare minimum, to be at an equivalent level to your Caro Kann play, won't you need 10 slow training games on each of Bg5, Bc4, Be2, Be3 ? Won't you need 5 games on Alapin, 5 on closed? Won't you do a 2-3 hour analysis of each game?

That's already almost the equivalent of working two months on a full time job..

Add to that time to study books, dvds, articles.

If you have a coach who knows the Najdorf well, then leverage it, because everything will be much quicker that route - but if not, all this time will greatly improve other areas if invested there.

We'd all love to be able to play 3 openings against e4 but realistically, it's better to acknowledge that the investment required is simply above capacity for non-professionals.

That said you can still learn a lot about chess from the eg Najdorf without playing it yourself. Look at annotated games of Fischer, Gelfald, Kasparov, Topalov, and read the Najdorf chapters from the Mauricio Flores book ( for other openings replace the heroes names but the story is more or less the same ).

You should try playing Sicilian Bowdler Attack

Remember...   𝓑𝓸𝔀𝓭𝓵𝓮𝓻 𝓐𝓽𝓽𝓪𝓬𝓴

That's also a different structure that will enrich the number of positions he/she is familiar with, while keeping the scope of new positions to a manageable level. I've been contemplating trying it myself after studying a couple of well analysed games in the said line, the analysis changed my somewhat naive previous perception of this line.

I didn't comment so much on the basis of which lines are good, clearly e.g. the Najdorf or any normal Sicilian is a good opening. It was more of making a case that changes to the response to e4 require a huge effort equivalent to e.g. studying Kasparov's predecessors, with the later probably offering more bang for the buck.

Bowdler is pretty bad for white, as black has a very easy way of getting an equal position

A bit off-topic but perhaps connected to your point: this one is not a Bowdler Attack this time but a Bc4 Sicilian. Aginst Fischer's Bc4 move in the Najdorf I adopt a defensive layout identical to the one described by Optimissed. Instead of fianchettoing the c8-Bishop at b7, I keep it on its original c8-e6 diagonal in order to overprotect e6, and instead fianchetto my Queen!

The Bishop remains on c8 guarding e6, while the Queen takes over the duties usually assigned to a fianchettoed Bishop.

I feel like the issues are different with the najdorf since a knight on d4 also aims at e6. However white cannot really make that happen in the bowdler. I’ve always fianchettoed my bishop and it leads to good results.

An expression comes to mind:

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."