Sicilian Defence, Alapin Variation

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

, the

Sicilian Defence The Sicilian Defence is a chess opening that begins with the following moves: :1. e4 c5 The Sicilian is the most popular and best-scoring response to White's first move 1.e4. Opening 1.d4 is a statistically more successful opening for White be ...

, Alapin Variation is a response to the

characterised by the moves: :1. e4 c5 :2. c3 It is named after the Russian

master Master or masters may refer to: Ranks or titles * Ascended master, a term used in the Theosophical religious tradition to refer to spiritually enlightened beings who in past incarnations were ordinary humans *Grandmaster (chess), National Master ...

Semyon Alapin (1856–1923). For many years, it was not held in high regard, since 2...d5 was thought to allow Black easy . Today, the Alapin is considered to be one of the most and respectable , and it is championed by grandmasters such as Evgeny Sveshnikov,

Eduardas Rozentalis Eduardas Rozentalis (born 27 May 1963 in Vilnius) is a Lithuanian chess grandmaster. He played for the Lithuanian team in every Chess Olympiad since 1992, except in 2000 and 2012. Rozentalis won the Lithuanian Chess Championship in 1981, 19 ...

Sergei Tiviakov Sergei Tiviakov (russian: Серге́й Тивяков; born 14 February 1973) is a Russian–Dutch chess grandmaster. He is