Crush the Sicilian Defence Chess Opening: Smith-Morra Gambit

The Sicilian defence is a very common opening that is reached after 1.e4 c5. Players often use this to create interesting imbalances and try for a win even with the black pieces. It was a favourite of the great world champions of the past including Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov. This course provides an interesting weapon against it.

The Sicilian defence players are often armed with a lot of theoretical knowledge and model games. You can basically turn the tables on their knowledge using a respectable gambit which is even used by modern International Masters like Marc Esserman.

The Smith-Morra Gambit is a Gambit you can easily get into from the move sequence:

1.e4 c5 (The Sicilian Defence)

2.d4 (yes on move 2!)

The Smith-Morra Gambit has become in recent years a hugely popular approach to handling the Sicilian defence which is one of the most popular responses to 1.e4 because of its reputation of giving Black options to try and win with the Black pieces and a favorite of the world chess champions such as Mikhail Tal, Bobby Fischer, and Garry Kasparov.

The Smith-Morra gambit has a big advantage of being relatively easy to play and yet can give the opportunity at the cost of a pawn for quick development and strong attacking chances. As importantly, the gambit can be very easily reached in actual games, with a high probability of coming up, and so the learning here is more effective than most Opening courses which may sometimes rarely come up in actual games.

Kingscrusher himself was an early chess Youtuber and may have also contributed to its popularity by frequent usage in blitz games with success even against International Masters and Grandmasters. One of Kingscrusher's most popular Youtube playlists is the Smith-Morra gambit playlist which this course also examines some of the better games for ideas to mine and use in one's own games if the engine verdict gives approval. There is a balance in the course given between "Easy to play" and "Accuracy" and the course tries to find the right balance between these two key priorities to recommend variations that are both easy to play and can scale up against increasingly strong opposition because they are fundamentally sound and engine verified recommendations.

This course breaks down the common setups and systems players with the Black pieces might use, and essentially creates punching bags out of these setups by establishing the downsides of each setup, and theoretically checking resources that may not have been played before in practice using the top engines to find important new innovations where possible. Then key model games are illustrated to reinforce the potential downsides of each setup, thus giving excellent preparation at handling any potential setup the player with the black pieces tries.

The setups examined include both accepting the Gambit and declining the gambit.

Accepting the Gambit

Not quite the classical!     4 Nc6 5 Nf3 d6 6 Bc4 Nf6 near-disaster move!

Classical Main Line 4 Nc6 5 Nf3 d6 6 Bc4 e6 7 0-0 Nf6 8 Qe2 Be7 9 Rd1

Classical main line with 6 a6 defence-  major option for black (just not Nf6!)

Scheveningen setup: 4 Nc6 5 Nf3 d6 6 Bc4 e6 7 0-0 Nf6 (or Be7) 8 Qe2 a6 9 Rd1

Siberian Variation: 4 Nc6 5 Nf3 e6 6 Bc4 Nf6 and 7   Qc7

Nge7 variations: 4 Nc6 (or 4   e6) 5 Nf3 e6 6 Bc4 a6 (Nge7) 7 0-0 Nge7

6   a6 Defence: 4 Nc6 5 Nf3 d6 6 Bc4 a6 eventually 7   Bg4

Fianchetto Variation 4 g6 (or Nc6 first) 5 Nf3 Bg7 6 Bc4 Nc6

Chicago Defence: 4  e6 5 Bc4 a6 6 Nf3 b5 7 Bb3 d6 8 0-0 and Black plays    Ra7

Early queenside fianchetto: 4  e6 5 Bc4 a6 6 Nf3 b5 7 Bb3 Bb7

Finegold Defence 4  d6-(no Nc6) 5  Nf3 e6 6  Bc4 Nf6 7  0-0 Be7 8  Qe2 a6

Declining the Gambit

Declined: Early Qa5 pinning move (liked by engines)

Declined: Push variation Variation: 3   d3

Declined: Nf6 Alapin Variation transpositions

Declined: d5 style

Declined: e5 style

Declined: e6 style

Very early deviations after 2 d4

Early deviations are considered

Middlegame and Tactical training emphasis

Throughout the theoretical introductions and model games, the course also hopes to generally supercharge the student's understanding of chess tactics and the middlegame generally. Finding tactical solutions through questioning throughout helps the student engage more with the material and try and work things out. This will equip the student with better tactical and middlegame understanding which should boost chess results generally.