| GM John Nunn had a lot of success with his trilogy
Beating the Sicilian 1, 2 and
3 . Others have tried to follow suit, but none with the same success. (The latest being Nigel Davies with
Taming the Sicilian, where the White repertoire was based on g3-lines against almost everything.)
It was with this knowledge that Ari Ziegler and Jacob Aagaard discussed the idea of a repertoire book against the Sicilian in 2003, while developing the idea of a new chess publishing company. The discussions (leading to this book) ended with the idea of contacting strong players who had specialist knowledge in the lines in question. It was our conviction that this would give the reader the best possible insight into the finer points of a particular line. As experienced players and opening book writers we know that important finesses are missed if you do not:
1. Use a lot of time analysing the games, instead of just believing the players' own analysis.
2. Have prior knowledge of the system.
It is obviously not easy to get many busy chess players to deliver up-to-date material all at the same time. However it was also not as difficult as we feared. Alexander Raetsky and Peter Wells were playing tournaments at the time of the deadline, but still managed to deliver with only a week's delay. And this despite serious computer problems for both!
It has been interesting to learn how differently some very strong players view opening theory, and see how this has made itself apparent in their contributions. At one extreme there is Viktor Gavrikov with his dense theoretical style, at the other Peter Heine Nielsen with his ideas-based approach. This is not a matter of playing strength or necessarily style of play. These two GMs are the two highest rated players contributing to this book, and are both renowned theoreticians. For this reason we decided that it did not make any sense to make huge changes to the style chosen by the different contributors. Clearly a lot of general editing has been done, but we made no particular effort to limit the diversity of the book's authors.
We hope you will find this book enlightening and entertaining.
Glasgow, October 2 nd 2004
Jacob Aagaard, John Shaw
Foreword to the revised 2006 edition As we wanted to re-typeset to a bigger format when we had to reprint this book, we decided to insert the corrections of both language and chess moves we had encountered since the book was first published. In essence, the book is the same as the 2004 edition, but a lot of minor changes and a few updates will hopefully make it an improved edition.
The updates compared to the first edition do not only include improvements for White, but also for Black. We have tried to present the reader with an honest picture of the development of the lines over the last two years, but not upheld ourselves to the obligations of delivering a bullet proof repertoire. We found this approach the most honest and hopefully the readers will do so too.
In that connection we would like to thank Mikhail Golubev for revising his chapter on the Dragon.
Glasgow, June 1 st 2006
Jacob Aagaard, John Shaw
Content:
005 Preface
007 The writers
009 The Najdorf
037 The Dragon
071 The Sveshnikov
089 The Classical Sicilian
117 The Kan and Taimanov
147 The Accelerated Dragon
157 The Scheveningen
173 The Kalashnikov
181 The Four Knights
187 The Pin Variation
197 The Nimzowitsch Variation
209 Minor lines
221 5th move alternatives
226 List of variations
227 List of games | 
