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Welcome back to chessopenings.com. In today's video, we take a look at the
Open Sicilian. The Sicilian begins with the moves, pawn to e4, and now,
pawn to c5. With this move, pawn to c5, Black anticipates and aims to
neutralize White's attempts to expand in the center with the move, d2 to
d4. The overall idea is that when White plays d4, Black will capture a
center pawn with a flank pawn, leaving him with a two to one central pawn
majority. However, in the Open Sicilian, White happily accepts this
situation, and he simply plays knight f3 aiming to play d4, and he's going
to bank on a fantastic lead and development, which we'll take a look at
today. Let's take a look.
The Open Sicilian starts with the moves, e4, c5, and then knight to f3.
Now, pretty much no matter what Black does, maybe d6 being his slight
favorite in this position, White will play pawn to d4, and takes, takes. In
the Open Sicilian, Black's two center pawns to White's one nearly always
end up being a very annoying factor for White to face. In the Sicilian,
Black stakes many of his counter chances on the unique possibilities that
are offered to him by this simple two to one pawn majority. As it turns
out, theory and practice demonstrates time and again that this factor of
the position is extremely helpful for Black, and even offers him real,
dynamic chances. So why does White just willy-nilly go in for this exchange
on the d4 square? Well, the main answer is that White nearly always gains a
tremendous lead in development in the Open Sicilian.
Let's study these positions really closely, and see why this happens. Now,
right away, let's consider an interesting point which you may not have
looked at before. When White opens the game with e4, he not only sees his
important squares in the center, but he also contributes to the development
of his king's bishop, and in certain cases, he also develops the queen. In
contrast, when Black plays the Sicilian, we can right away surmise that,
sooner or later, he's going to have to spend another move with his pawns in
order to help develop his king side bishops, since the move, c5, does
nothing to actually contribute to the development of a piece. Since piece
development is usually more than pawn moves, the Sicilian already incurs a
slight risk that Black will fall behind a move in piece development, when
he goes to deploy this bishop.
To show an example of how this works, let's take a look at the variation
known as the Classical Sicilian, which begins with the moves, knight to f6,
knight c3, knight c6, and now after White simply plays bishop g5, we run
into this little issue which I talked about before. Since Black's first
move did nothing to contribute to the development of his dark squared
bishop, he is now going to have to use another pawn move. He plays pawn to
e6, usually, to bring out this bishop, whereas White simply continues queen
d2, bishop d7, castles queen side, and castles king side. Now, while it may
not seem like such a big deal, you'll notice that in this position that
White has developed four pieces - one, two, three, four - and also managed
to castle, whereas Black has only managed to develop three pieces and has
managed to castle. Also, White even has the right to move, so White has
gained a little bit of piece development here. This all stems from the fact
that Black's first move, pawn to c5, did nothing to help contribute to
piece development.
We've discovered one way that White gets a little extra time for his piece
development in the Sicilian, but there is an even bigger bonus tempo for
White in the Open Sicilian. Take a look at the basic position after pawn to
e4, pawn to c5, knight f3, d6, and pawn to d4. Now Black has no choice but
to engage in the exchange, C takes d4, and knight takes d4. Of course, he's
happy to do this, since he's banking on the two to one central majority to
play out in his favor. But, did you ever notice that the exchange on d4
actually grants White a free tempo for his development? Normally, we would
expect that whenever it's Black's turn, White would be one move ahead in
development, since he begins with the right to move. In this case, White is
two moves ahead, since his knight has been allowed to move a second time,
to a more pleasant central square, at no penalty whatsoever. This occurred
because Black initiated the exchange, and White's recapture on d4
contributes to his overall development and any time a player initiates an
exchange, and the recapturing party's recapturing move helps to advance his
development, the recapturing party gains a tempo.
Here are a couple of other examples of this similar principle. For example,
if White would simply play the move, pawn to d4, Black takes, and, in fact,
queen takes d4, is a situation where it appears White has made two moves
and Black has made zero at the moment. Of course, in this position, there
is no value to the extra tempo, because the queen's exposure will instantly
cause White to lose whatever time he's gained, for example, with knight c6.
But, I do want to show that once this exchange happens on d4, there is
simply a gain of tempo which takes place.
To draw another interesting comparison, let's take a look at the Scotch
Opening, which begins with the moves, pawn to e4, pawn to e5, knight f3,
knight c6, and now, once again, in a very different position, pawn to d4,
taking on d4, and knight takes d4. Now, how does White gain a tempo? In
fact, he has. It appears that in this position, on the board, it looks like
White has made three moves - one, two, three - as opposed to Black's one.
So, White has gained a tempo from this voluntary exchange on d4. However,
here's where that notable difference between the movement of the E pawn and
the movement of the C pawn comes out, and that is, that Black's move, pawn
to e5, contributes to the development of his bishop and his queen. Black is
able to make use of this fact, in order to make sure that White does not
profit too much from this extra tempo, in this position. For example, one
way that Black can do this is he can play the move, bishop to c5, attacking
the knight on d4.
Now, clearly, if White were to play knight take c6, he would dissolve two
of the tempi he invested in this knight, so he would actually fall behind
in the development, and that's not to say that knight take c6 is a bad move
- it's used to sometimes damage the pawn structure. However, the most
principled reaction would be bishop to e3, trying to maintain this knight
on the centralized square. But, Black once again makes use of the fact that
he can bring his pieces into the play a little bit more quickly, using the
move, queen to f6, to further pressure d4. It's at this point that White
finally has to make a concession with the move, pawn to c3, in order to
solidify the position of the knight on d4. It's because of this little
move, a pawn move, which does not contribute to piece development, and
which also takes away the ordinary square for this knight on b1. It's
because of this little move that White's advantage in time has
significantly diminished in its value.
This is mainly because of the fact that the move, e5, as opposed to c5,
contributes to the development of Black's pieces. It's not going to be
nearly as easy for Black in the Open Sicilian. After, let's say, pawn e4,
c5, knight at 3, knight c6, pawn d4, takes, and takes, White has gained the
tempo. Attempts to force White to make concessions by defending the knight
or exchanging it simply won't succeed; Black simply doesn't have a rapid
enough development to ensure that this becomes a key factor in the
position. Black has a harder time building a concentrated attack on the d4
knight, and often, if he does succeed, White is still OK with moving the
knight to b3, where it still contributes to the overall development by
helping to defend the queen side, and it also gets out of the way of the
king side pawns, which will be useful in a pawn storm. Meanwhile, any
measures which Black took to force the knight to move away from d4 often
have downsides of their own. For example, the most straightforward method
of playing to assert the knight on d4 is actually an early e5.
In fact, this position would be one place where you could do this. But,
this seriously weakens the d5 square, and this is one of the major
drawbacks of playing in this way, whereas certain other plans involving an
eventual queen b6 have the downside of this queen will often be vulnerable
to an attack at a later point. Thus, we have established a second way that
White profits in development in the Open Sicilian. The exchange on d4
actually gives him a tempo, a tempo which he is actually able to profit
from since the advance knight can be adequately protected, and its movement
away from the f3 square greatly contributes to his ability to deploy the F
pawn, which will definitely help in generating an attack in a later phase
of the game.
There is a third and final reason why Black tends to fall so far behind in
development in the Open Sicilian, and this has to do with his tendency to
play another little pawn move, in the form of a7 to a6. Probably the best
example of this is in the Najdorf Sicilian, which is the position arising
after pawn to d6, pawn to d4, pawn takes pawn, knight takes pawn, knight
f6, knight c3, and now simply this little move, a6. This is a very popular
move, with a very strong reputation. In fact, the careers of both Bobby
Fischer and Garry Kasparov were enhanced greatly by playing these positions
on the Black side and they both managed to do very well.
The idea in the current position is simply to, in the future, prepare b7 to
b5, and at the same time, to deprive some of White's minor pieces of the b5
square, but, of course, this is yet another pawn move that contributes to
White's overall increase in piece development. For example, after the
moves, bishop b2, e6 - getting ready to bring that bishop into the game -
and castles king side, White has an impressive four pieces to play, and he
has managed to castle, whereas Black has only one single piece to play, and
has not yet managed to castle. Yet, this position has a very strong
reputation for Black, which should begin to tell you a little something
about the inherent strength of these two to one pawns in the center, which
are a major compensating factor for Black.
Time and time again, it has been shown that Black gradually unfolds his
pieces, he puts some pressure on the e4 pawn along the way, and he begins
to expand his queen side pawns, and suddenly, White finds that his
development advantage has disappeared, and he's faced with substantial
difficulties in addressing Black's counter-play. During all of this time,
White hopes to crash through, with a winning attack based on his extra
development, and he often succeeds, but the central pawns go a long way in
slowing him down. Notice that they control quite a few squares. They
control c5, d5, e5, f5, making it difficult for White to get into the
position. It's this factor which often gives Black just the amount of time
he needs to lead his development, keep his position solid, and later, to
turn the tables on White.
In the end, both sides are taking important strategic risks in the Open
Sicilian. White, for example, gives up his central pawn, exchanges it for a
flank pawn, but he does so in order to get a fantastic lead in development.
If he can manage to crash through Black's position before Black is able to
catch up in development, White will often be rewarded with a spectacular
attacking victory. On the other hand, if he does not manage to crash
through, Black often completes his development, and then relies upon this
factor of the central pawn majority, as well as other sorts of factors in
the position to gain serious counter chances.
This is the exciting paradox contained in the Sicilian, and it's the source
of many of its basic mysteries. If you have an appetite for chess, where
deep strategy and imagination come to the forefront, then the Sicilian is
worth examination for both sides. That's all for today. We'll see you soon.