A friend of mine is getting started with chess. He’s been playing for a little while now and is starting to want to pick some openings. He wants to play the Sicilian as black (which I do not do) and is looking for a good intro book. I’m having a hard time. Emms has a Starting Out book about the Sicilian, but I’m not sure if it is geared to white or black. Most of the Sicilian books assume you know which Sicilian you want to play, which my friend does not. Can someone recommend a good Sicilian intro book and/or what the easiest open Sicilian line is for a novice/low intermediate player to pick up?
In other news, I’ve recently had time and the desire to play some chess again after having burned out and gotten too busy. Hopefully I’ll have the time to write a couple of posts I’ve had on my mind regarding my recent games and some issues I’ve encountered trying to use Fritz to help me work on my openings.
I would be dubious of the Starting Out: The Sicilian book. First of all, the Sicilian is a rather lousy opening to Start out with, as there are many many tricky sidelines that white can play, and more often than not, your opponents will avoid the main lines like the plague, especially at lower levels. I tried playing the dragon for a stretch at tournament praxis in the 1700 range, and got to play 2 open sicilians out of 14 games, and one of the two was an obscure sideline! However, that said, the sicilian is still probably black’s best reply to 1.e4. Soooo, if you must play it, I would suggest that the best single source might be Opening for Black by Perelshteyn, Alburt and Roman. This book recommends the Accelerated Dragon, which is very solid, and also provides a very consistent, thematic repertoire approach for play against all of the sidelines and variants. Perhaps the safest sicilian and the most flexible to play is the Kan variation, 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6. It cuts out most of white’s really aggressive setups, and avoids the annoyance of the 3.Bb5 lines, and is still good besides, being in the repertoire of many strong grandmasters. However, the only good book on it that I am aware of is John Emm’s recent everyman, and that is in game form and short on explanation and doesn’t provide a repertoire against the “anti-sicilian” sidelines. In general, I would advise staying away from the other lines if you’re a beginner. They’re very violent and very concrete.