10 Openings Every Chess Player Must Memorise

The Sicilian Defence is a popular alternative to the Open Game. Instead of black responding to pawn to E4 with pawn to E5, they instead play the move C5. It is one of the most popular openings, with on average one quarter of high level chess games using this opening.

The C5 move gives black control of the D4 square, and thus a strong presence in the centre of the board. White can respond rather aggressively from this position, so it is advised that black knows the mainline strategies to defend. The most common move for white is to play the king’s side knight to F3, contesting the D4 square as well as attacking the E5 square.

There are three main move black can play as a response to this: pawn to D6, pawn to E6 and queen’s side knight to C6. No matter which variation you are playing, whites’ strongest third move is to play pawn to D4. Blacks’ best counter to this is to simply take on D4, which will drive white to do the same with the knight on their fourth turn. If white doesn’t follow up with D4, however, the most common move to expect is king’s side bishop to B5 which can be a good follow up to D6 to force black to defend and exchange a major piece.