Play the Open Sicilian Part 1 by GM Miguel Santos

Every chess player needs to decide this: how will you face the Sicilian Defense?

The Sicilian is the most aggressive reply to 1.e4. Studying it deeply is imperative, but its sharp nature and theoretical burden don’t help the White player’s cause. Mastering it seems impossible sometimes.

Sometimes, though, a well-known Sicilian destroyer gives you his strategical blueprint and opens the door to your Sicilian success.

Now you can copy it and never worry about the Sicilian evermore.

Learn how with someone who eats the Sicilian for breakfast

In Play the Open Sicilian, Spanish Grandmaster Miguel Santos tells about his transformation into a professional player:

The first change in my repertoire was to introduce the Open Sicilian with much more extensive analysis.

As a budding young player, the Sicilian was an unavoidable battlefield for him, so he decided to eliminate the sideline-ish approach from his repertoire and face it properly.

Fast-forward a few years, and Miguel knows the Sicilian well: as an opening enthusiast, he has analyzed it considerably, he plays it with both colors, and most notably, he scores an impressive 64.7% with White in the Open Variation.

At age 22, he just broke 2600. He is vigorous over the board, and so will be your handling of the Sicilian under his instruction.

After studying this course, you will look forward to meeting the Sicilian

The Open Variation is the critical line against the Sicilian. In this course, Miguel will show you how to play it with complete confidence.

In an era where everyone has a lot of information, surprising our opponents is more important than ever.

That is why he recommends practical variations where you can orient yourself through ideas instead of move orders, easily understand the positional nuances, and still remember your analyses in the sharpest lines.

While his annotations are accessible to players from any level, the novelties and correspondence chess’ ideas in the course make this repertoire playable at 2600 and beyond.

In this first part, out of two, you will learn to fight these variations:

✅ Nimzowitch – with the 3.e5 and 5.Ne4 mainline, where Miguel has found new ways of punishing Black for their adventurous play

✅ O’Kelly – the one time we don’t go for the Open variation right away. Instead, you’ll play all the useful moves to timely switch to a Maroczy bind

✅ Grivas – you’ll focus on killing Black’s 1-move-threats and then win tempo on the exposed Queen to build a standard kingside attack

✅ Lowenthal – secure a lasting advantage with 8.Qd1 and punish Black’s tries to overcomplicate matters with precise play

✅ Kalashnikov – where you’ll avoid misplacing a piece with 7.N5c3 and will control d5 earlier than in the mainline

✅ Sveshnikov – with the fashionable 7.Nd5 with 9.a4 against 8…Nb8 and 9.c4 against 8…Ne7

✅ Classical – with the Sozin Attack (6.Bc4), as direct as the 6.Bg5, but less expected and theoretical

✅ Najdorf – with the Classical 6.Be2 aiming at a positional squeeze in the queenside… which could turn into a full-fledged kingside attack if Black doesn’t know how to handle it!

In 23 hours of video and 700 trainable lines!

That’s just 45 minutes a day for a month, time enough to learn the most important variations, test them online, ask Miguel about any doubt you may have, and make sure this repertoire is for you.