From Sicilian Manuscripts to Fischer and Kasparov: How One Reply to 1.e4 Became the Fighting Opening
By Cameron W. · Thu, 29 Oct 2026
One move. That is all it takes. White plays 1.e4, Black answers 1...c5, and from that instant the game is no longer a polite conversation
One move. That is all it takes. White plays 1.e4, Black answers 1...c5, and from that instant the game is no longer a polite conversation. It is a fight, and everyone at the board knows it. The Sicilian Defence is the reply that says "I am not here for a draw," and it has been saying so, with some interruptions, for more than 400 years. This is the second story in our series on the history of chess's great openings.
Italian beginnings
The earliest serious work on it came from Italy. Giulio Polerio analyzed the idea in a manuscript dated 1594, though he did not call it Sicilian. Alessandro Salvio wrote about it in 1604, Don Pietro Carrera around 1617, and Gioachino Greco in 1623. The name arrived much later. In 1813, the English master Jacob Henry Sarratt fixed "the Sicilian Defence" in English, drawing on an old Italian manuscript that spoke of il gioco siciliano, the Sicilian game. So a name that sounds ancient was in fact settled by an Englishman reading an old Italian note.
Praised, then buried
Not everyone loved it at first. In 1777, the great Philidor called it absolutely defensive and very far from the best, though he allowed it was useful for testing an opponent you did not know. Yet for much of the nineteenth century it was popular. La Bourdonnais played it in his famous matches against McDonnell in 1834, Staunton used it against Saint-Amant in 1843, and it was tested again at London in 1851.
Then came the great chill. Paul Morphy distrusted it, Wilhelm Steinitz preferred 1...e5, and the deaths of Staunton in 1874 and Anderssen in 1879 took away its two greatest champions. By the early twentieth century Capablanca was calling it an opening in which Black's game is full of holes. At St. Petersburg 1914, not one of the 75 games began with it. At New York 1924, it appeared six times in 110 games. The comeback had barely started.
The revival
It took the Soviet school to bring the Sicilian roaring back in the 1940s and 1950s. Botvinnik, Boleslavsky, Kotov and Bronstein turned it into a serious weapon, and so did Miguel Najdorf, whose name would become one of the most famous in the whole opening. His 5...a6 was designed to prepare ...e5 by stopping White's bishop from checking on b5. Meanwhile, Paul Keres introduced 6.g4 in 1943, giving White a sharp answer that still carries his name.
The Sicilian grew a gallery of lines with wonderful names. In 1901, Fyodor Dus-Chotimirsky christened the Dragon, because Black's kingside pawns on d6, e7, f7, g6 and h7 looked like the stars of the Draco constellation. The Sveshnikov, pioneered in the 1970s by Evgeny Sveshnikov and Gennadi Timoshchenko, had once been called the Lasker-Pelikan, after Lasker's single game with it against Schlechter.
The Fischer and Kasparov years
Two world champions made the Sicilian their own. Bobby Fischer played it almost exclusively as Black against 1.e4, popularized the Poisoned Pawn, and filled his book My 60 Memorable Games with 22 Sicilians, or 37 percent of the total. Garry Kasparov did the same, and in the 1985 world championship he twice played the sharp 8...d5, the line known as the Kasparov Gambit. Fischer also chose 3.Nc3 against Spassky in Game 18 of the 1972 match.
Why it never leaves
The numbers tell the story. In 1990, Modern Chess Openings called it the most played and most analyzed opening at club and master level. The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings gives it the codes B20 to B99, more than any other opening. Around 80 percent of master games beginning 1.e4 c5 continue with 2.Nf3, and even Deep Blue chose the Alapin (2.c3) in its 1996 opener against Kasparov. A defence that was written off for decades has become the one everyone must learn. Black's c-pawn takes a step, and the whole board starts to burn.
