Thanks to everybody for the various suggestions and questions relating to the c3-Sicilian. As some of you may know I have recently been updating the Anti-Sicilian page on Chess Publishing and the suggestions on Ginger GM are very useful in showing what people are interested in.

I have covered some of the mentioned lines in the January 2012 Chess Pub update, including a detailed look at 1.e4 c5 2.c3 Nf6 3.e5 Nd5 4.d4 cxd4 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.cxd4 d6 7.Bc4 dxe5!?, where my previous recommendation of 8.Bxd5!? Qxd5 9.Nc3 only leads to rough equality after 9…Qd6! 10.d5 Nd4 11.Nxd4 exd4 12.Qxd4 e5!. Accordingly I’ve provided some coverage of the endgame after 8.dxe5 and the IQP position arising after 9.Nxe5!?.

There are a couple of other interesting lines mentioned on Ginger GM which I hope to deal with in forthcoming updates (at some point I’ll also have a look at Simon’s series of wins with the line!). Please do continue to post questions and comments, several of the lines were new to me. As illustrated by Howell – Wang Yue, Hastings 2011/12 (also covered in the January update), there are many lines in the Anti Sicilians which have fallen out of fashion for no particular reason, so it’s always useful when people post a suggestion.

All the best,
Sam

(BTW, I missed the first two rounds! I mean, please advertise this kind of things on your blog in the future, if possible: I’m sure not to be the only one who has pleasure in enjoying some quality live comment of high level Chess tournaments, whenever possible!)