I have written about the other popular black defenses to E4 as white’s first move. Since I have already mentioned the French Defense, Caro Kann Defense, and Scandinavian Defense, it’s only fair that I at least mention the Sicilian because of it’s popularity.

The Sicilian begins after 1. e4 c5

You may look at this and wonder what the point is of black moving the pawn to C5. It accomplishes a few things. First, it means that white cannot move their Queen’s pawn to D4 without it being captured. Second, it does allow black’s queen to put the white king in the event that white ever moves that queen’s pawn one or two spaces.

Second, it means the the knight on B8 can move to C6 without blocking the pawn from moving because that pawn has already moved two spaces. This gives your queen more options and then if white is dumb enough to move anything to B4 or D4 then it can be killed with either a pawn or knight!

Look at the next image to see something very common that happens when I play chess online using the Sicilian Defense.

White is moving the Bishop out to C4 to attack the weak F7 pawn near the King. White is hoping for a scholar’s mate. Black moves the knight as I suggested above. Then look at what happens next in many cases.

White moves the queen to F3 and almost has a scholar’s mate, but then black messes it up by forking the queen, bishop, and the F7 pawn that white was trying to attack with both the queen and bishop.

White is in a difficult position. They can’t protect both their queen and bishop. They can move the queen near the bishop to capture the knight if it captures the bishop, but they are also losing time because they can’t move any of their other pieces and start bringing their bishops into the game until they defend their queen.

That’s only one of infinite possibilities that could happen in a chess game, but it happens often enough that I used it for this post as an introduction to the Sicilian Defense.