Chess Openings: Introduction to the Sicilian Defense Main Lines with 2. ... Nc6 and 2. ... E6

Of all of black's responses to white's 1. e4, the Sicilian Defense has the best results in high level chess, with white only scoring 52.2% of the games. Compare this to the French Defense which has white scoring 55.4%, or the Scandinavian Defense which has white scoring 57.4%. From these numbers alone, we can see that the Sicilian Defense is a serious opening for the attacking player as black, and leads to black having a lot more play than other defenses to 1. e4.

The Sicilian Defense starts off with the moves 1. e4 c5. The point of this move is that black plans to trade his c-pawn for white's d-pawn. When this trade happens, black will have two central pawns while white will only have one central pawn. This gives black a lot of potential to break through into white's center. A general theme in all main lines of the Sicilian Defense is that white will control the center in the beginning of the game, and black's play will revolve around attacking white's center. The fact that black will have two central pawns to do this with is often decisive.

Moving along, in the main lines of the Sicilian Defense, white's next move is 2. Nf3, which prepares to play d2-d4. The reason white plays Nf3 first is so that when he plays d2-d4, and black plays cxd4, white can reply with Nxd4 instead of having to take with Qxd4. If white has to play Qxd4, then black can attack the white queen with moves like Nc6 and gain time.

And here, black generally plays one of three different moves. Black will normally play 2. ... Nc6, 2. ... d6, or 2. ... e6, all of which lead to different lines. Something that you will notice if you study the Sicilian Defense is that there are a lot of transpositions that black can make with his move order, so if he plays Nc6 here, he can easily switch to a variation that's normally played by playing e6 here instead. In this article, I will cover some of the main Sicilian Defense variations that originate from 2. ... Nc6 and 2. ... e6. This will serve as a bit of a survey of the Sicilian Defense main lines so that you may see at a glance what appeals to you and what does not, so that you can decide what you would like to study further.

The Rossolimo Variation