The Closed Sicilian

What do you all think about this opening? I find it interesting and do play it sometimes (not always) against ..1.c5. I think it´s very valuable to play it against weaker players who are not familiar with lines as white can get exstreamly good play on the kingside if black is not careful.

An example of this is that if black moves his king´s knight early and allowes white to set up with Qd2, Bh6, h4-h5 then black is in trouble if he does not defend correctly. If white gets to open up the h-file in this setup black is doomed.

Of course if black knows this opening he is pretty much OK (like in other openings ;-) ). Playing correctly black even gets a little better position with a strong Bishop on g7, open b-file for his queen´s rook with play along the queenside.

Please let me hear your views on this matter. Thanks.

Not very popular opening I guess, lol.

I used to play the sicilian and disliked playing against it. It's sound and good psychologically as most sicilian players like the open game.
A big advocate of this opening was Spassky. He played a lot of it, if you check out chessgames.com.

I'm not keen on it at all, although I did toy with it once - if you want an anti-Sicilian, it's probably the best, but since when was the Sicilian so well-handled by the majority of players at our level that you feel the need to run away from it? Open all the way.

😠It often resulted in a closed game without much tactical play. Thus I did not like it.

Originally posted by Regicidal
I used to play the sicilian and disliked playing against it. It's sound and good psychologically as most sicilian players like the open game.
A big advocate of this opening was Spassky. He played a lot of it, if you check out chessgames.com.