Thanks for the replyes.

I had never even looked at d5!

The sicilian I am most intrested in is Taimanov.
I even own the out of date Winning with the Sicilian by Taimanov as well as Taimanovs seleceted games.
I also own the Chess explanied book , the Move by Move book and Fleixlbe sicilian but I thought that d5 looked llogical with e6 already played so I did not read that chapter but transposning to some French Tarrash like does looks more intersting.

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Thanks kylemeister! -- I'm about to take this up so this is a nice timely game!

In general that's one of my favorite tactics, a bishop (or queen) pinning the f-pawn and plopping a piece on g3(6).  Obviously the most fun is when you get to play ...Qxg3+.  For some reason it seems to be easy for reasonably strong players to overlook.  Beautiful smothered mate there at the end!

The c3 Sicilan is a bit annoying for anyone who plays 2...e6 or 2...Nc6, since you have to have something you can play against both the 2.c3 and 3.c3 move orders. Not necessarily the same line, though that would of course be economical! 

Against 2.c3 Black even has funny sidelines like 2...g6, 2...b6 or 2...e5, as well as a wider choice of lines after 2...d5.

When I played the Kan, I found it particularly difficult to find lines with good winning chances after 2.Nf3 e6 3.c3. If White would only be so kind to transpose to the French Advance after 3...d5, but mostly they exchange on d5. Delchev and Semkov offer a very solid repertoire with 4.exd5 Qxd5 in their brand new Kan/Taimanov book, but you'd have to be a strong technical player to win from many of those positions (often IQP positions, if that's your kind of thing). To me that doesn't seem very consistent with the unbalanced Kan, but I'm not sure there are better options either.

The Taimanov is a more solid "Open", so combining that with 3.c3 d5 4.exd5 Qxd5 makes a lot of sense.

A bit of topic but I like say something.

I have been thinking about take up a e6 based sicilian like Kan, Taimanov or Paulsen.
Currenty I play Caro Kann but as one of my friends says: you should play sicilian and not Caro Kann!

Almost every time I try it, White players plays 3 c3 and only 3 d4  if very booked up. I also often met 3 d3 if they play 2 Nf3 to begin with.
The question is if I  should specialize on c3 sicilians or keep Caro Kann as main weapon and forget about playing e6 sicilians.

MartinC wrote on 08/04/14 at 08:29:03:


That would be the long-standing conventional wisdom. You sometimes try to play c4 in order to provoke d4 as a response. Perhaps it isn't a surprise to see Sadler playing in this style. In his youth didn't he take part in some TV competition where given a position, he had to say which Fischer game it was from? I think they made it easier by only using the 60 memorable games.

I'm not sure if it really overthrows conventional assessments, but today's Olympiad game between Sadler (ENG) and Jingyoa Tin (SIN) started



Sadler went on to win, not withstanding the engine assessment as slightly better for Black.

It's a potential Anti French should Black co-operate.