Let's play the sicilian defense
Let's learn the Sicilian Defense! Legends like Kasparov, Fischer, and Carlsen mastered this opening — and who knows, maybe after this course, your name will be on that list too. Or hey, maybe you’re just trying to claw your way out of 600 ELO. Either way, you’re in the right place. Pawn to c5.
Let's continue with the open sicilian
White plays knight to f3, which means we're doing the OPEN sicilian. There are other moves white could've played, but this course is already 50 lines long so I'll save them for a future course. Next we play pawn to d6 to open up our light-squared bishop and stop white's e-pawn from marching down into our territory.
Ok, well that was quite aggressive from white. We need to take the pawn here or we risk white pushing the d-pawn forward and taking all the central space. Pawn takes on d4.
Great, we got rid of one of white's center pawns while keeping ours. Let's naturally develop and hit the e4 pawn next with knight to f6.
OK now we're going to enter the DRAGON sicilian with pawn to g6. It's called the dragon because supposedly our pawns are in the shape of a dragon. I think whoever named it has never seen a dragon - it should be called the squiggly line sicilian. In any case, pawn to g6 so we can put our bishop on g7 and castle.
Our plan: bishop to g7 and castle. Then we launch an attack on the queenside.
That move defended the e4 pawn. That doesn't really affect us or our plans. Let's just castle.
Let's develop the knight to c6. Simple chess, simple life.
Let's keep developing before we do anything crazy. Bishop to d7. This is a waiting move - we want to see which way white castles before we launch an attack.
Aaaand we bring our rook over to c8, aiming straight down for the king.
Now that white's bishop is on b3, our idea is to use our queenside pawns to race down and attack him. Before we do that though, let's play knight to d4 to trade off white's strong centralized knight and open up our rook.
OK! Time to use our pawns. Pawn to b5. We are TELLING our opponent that an attack is coming.
White moved his king to b1 - a common move, just to solidify everything. But now we continue our attack: Pawn to a5.
That move just LOST white the game after this forcing sequence: pawn takes a4...
... then bishop takes knight on a4 ...
.... and finally, rook to c4, FORKING the two bishops.
Our rook is under attack, but one brilliant move here wins us the game. And no, it's not moving the rook. Knight to e4 - hitting the QUEEN!
Now that our knight moved out of the way for our bishop, we have a second attacker on the bishop on d4. So, let's play rook takes on d4.
Yes!! We are a pawn up, but more than that: our position is so strong here the computer gives us a +4 point advantage and we win over NINETY PERCENT OF THE TIME FROM HERE
Now that white castled, we want to launch an attack. A serious one. To prep, let's move our bishop to d7. This let's our rook slide to c8 in the future and stare down at the white king
Now rook to c8. Our rook is looking down the board directly at the white king.
White is RACING down our king side but... if I'm being honest... I don't really care. I'm way more interested in causing some chaos with our knight and queen. First up: knight to e5.
Again. I simply do. not. care. about white's attack. Queen to a5 and all of a sudden, we win MOST of our games from here. You'll see why. Spoiler alert: we're going to sacrifice our knight on f3 and our rook on c3 a LOT.
If anything, white's attack on our king side is HELPING us. Now we can play f-pawn takes g6 and open up our other rook. All our pieces are becoming active.
Here, we actually take the bishop to LURE the queen AWAY from the guard of the c3 knight. Bishop takes bishop on h6.
Now? We sacrifice... THE ROOOOOOK. Rook takes knight on c3.
And the follow up: Queen takes pawn on c3.
Why not bring our other rook to the party? rook to c8, adding tons of pressure on that scrawny c2 pawn.
Well done! White will defend their c2 pawn and our knight will gobble on f3 to win a pawn.
Aaaaaaand game over. Queen to a1 check, forcing the king to d2.
Now with the king on d2, we can take the knight on d4 with our queen with check.
Obliterated. All our pieces are coming to hunt down this king. By the way - don't forget about our hanging knight on f6.
I told you there'd be sacrifices. And I didn't lie. The line here goes 20 moves deep, and it starts with sacrificing our knight on f3.
One sacrifice wasn't cool enough? Well how about sacrificing our rook on c3?
We're down in material, so we want to keep queens on the board right? WRONG. Queen takes queen on c3.
We're 4 points of material down. White is just simply up a rook. But our position is so deadly that it might not even matter. Bishop takes pawn on g4.
White had to defend their knight. Now we get knight takes pawn on e4, which wins a pawn (obviously) and also creates a DOUBLE attack on the c3 pawn. We have nasty intentions to put our knight on c3 and fork the king and rook.
Oof. White defended the pawn, but they did so the wrong way. Now we just have pawn to e5, hitting the bishop and forcing it away.
We don't even care about that pawn. We have bigger plans. Knight to c3 forking the rook and king. Splash.
Now we win our rook back. Knight takes rook on d1.
We won our rook back, and we'll win even more material soon because we have pawn to e4 discover-checking the king and hitting the f3 knight.
White moved their king to b1 a bit earlier than we're used to. It doesn't change much - we still go queen to a5.
White is threatening to fork us on e7 with check. We'll see in a second that this idea is actually completely losing for white. Queen takes queen on d2.
King to h8, only move. It looks like we're losing a rook here but remember, white has to take our queen first which means we'll get a chance to move our rook out of the way.
Now we move our rook to e8, hitting the knight, and white is completely lost.
To win from here we have a forcing sequence. First, knight takes knight on d5.
Now we sacrifice our knight on f3. Don't worry, we'll get the material back on the next move.
Time to get the material back. Rook takes bishop on e3.
White is dead. We are simply threating too many things. The knight on f3 is hanging, and we also have backrank checkmate in one.