How to Face the Sveshnikov Variation in the Sicilian Defense

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This course will provide you with a complete repertoire for White starting the game with the move 1.e4 (King’s Pawn Opening).

All the lines and games that I cover in the course will be provided to you under each lesson. For your convenience, I’ll provide them in 2 different formats: PDF and PGN. PGN (Portable Game Notation) is a standard format for recording chess games supported by most chess software.

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The Sveshnikov Variation in the Sicilian Defense (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e5) is a great example of how chess is becoming a more dynamic game as the decades go by.

Initial position in the Sveshnikov Variation

The move e5 by Black in this line has in theory several drawbacks. It makes the d-pawn a backward pawn and it weakens the very important and central d5-square. For these reasons, this line was not very popular 50 or more years ago.

But all of this is pretty much justified to cover the d4-square with the e5-pawn and gain a tempo, attacking the knight on d4, as regular practice of this line has shown.

Evgeny Sveshnikov, an early practitioner of this sharp variation

This line is becoming more and more popular, particularly when former world champion Magnus Carlsen prepared it for the 2018 World Chess Championship against Fabiano Caruana and he continued playing it.

That’s why I decided to create a lesson to cover the most important ideas to face this line and how to prepare against it to fight for an advantage, avoiding the most common mistakes. Considering that we’re focusing on building a repertoire, this line will be mainly based on ideas, so you won’t have to memorize a lot of lines to play it.

Check out the full lesson here: https://youtu.be/nI4YgKN-G0M