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
Sicilian language word has come to us directly from Catalan (as opposed to Provençal or Spanish), the following are likely to be such examples: By the time the crowns of Castille and Aragon were united in the late 15th century, the Italianisation of written Sicilian in the parliamentary and court records had commenced. By 1543 this process was virtually complete, with the Tuscan dialect of Italian becoming the "lingua franca" of the Italian peninsula and supplanting written Sicilian. Spanish rule had hastened this process in two important ways: Spanish rule lasted over three centuries (not counting the Aragonese and Bourbon periods on