Fra forordet til Kotronias

This book aims to give you a full repertoire against open Sicilians with 2...e6. Although I wrote it in first person, it is a joint effort by me – with a solid experience with both colours, and Semko Semkov, who is a life-long supporter of the Black’s cause and co-author of the best-selling The Most Flexible Sicilian.

It proved to be a herculean task because of the fluid centre and the
many transpositional possibilities. At times we thought we had reached an impasse, trying to crush those ultra solid structures, but then a dim light appeared. This dim light often led us to new ways and the bulk of the book is based on original analysis.

In all honesty, we do not want to claim that such a beast of an opening like the ...e7-e6 Sicilian can be refuted. We just relied on our own chess instincts and powerful computers to reassess latest tournament praxis and anticipate as much as possible future developments.

The underlying logic of this work is simple: Attack when you can, squeeze when you cannot! We chose the modern set-up with Bc1-e3 and Qd1-f3 in the Taimanov, as the English Attack has run out of steam (Aleksander Delchev and Semko himself played a great role in this with their previous works). It is strategically very rich, as it combines ideas ranging from aggressive pawn storms to endings that might arise after the manoeuvre Qf3-g3.

Contrary to what most people think, Sicilian endings are not always better for Black! The dark-squared complex on the queenside becomes weak without queens, and White’s
king is close to the battlefield.

Of course, Black does not have to oblige and he could keep the queens, but only at the cost of concessions. Commonly he will need to compromise his kingside in order to repel
our queen from g3 by ...h5-h4.

The Kan is even more flexible than the Taimanov, and we decided on a complicated positional-attacking treatment built around 5.c4. It bears the seal of approval of World Champions Carlsen and Anand.
White tries to grasp complete control of the centre in this line, hoping to see a Hedgehog formation.