Sicilian Defence Sicilian Defence The Sicilian Defence is a chess opening that begins with the following moves: The Sicilian is the most popular and best-scoring response to White's first move 1.e4. 1.d4 is a statistically more successful opening for White due to the high success rate of the Sicilian defence against 1.e4. "New In Chess" stated in its 2000 Yearbook that of the games in its database, White scored 56.1% in 296,200 games beginning 1.d4, but 54.1% in 349,855 games beginning 1.e4, mainly due to the Sicilian, which held White to a 52.3% score in 145,996 games. 17% of all games between
Ruy Lopez Leko used the Marshall to win an important game against World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. Currently, Armenian Grandmaster Levon Aronian is one of the main advocates for the Marshall Attack. The main lines of the Closed Ruy Lopez continue 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 0-0. White can now play 9.d3 or 9.d4, but by far the most common move is 9.h3 which prepares d4 while preventing the awkward pin ...Bg4. This can be considered the main line of the opening as a whole and thousands of top-level games have reached this position. White aims to play d4 followed by Nbd2–f1–g3, which