Best respond for sicilian defense?

Most siccilian defense chessable courses cover the alapin and it usually leads to a favorable position for black.

Alapin. you play c3 to play d4

@aljaykeung

That's a misrepresentation of the opening because you are not showing the opponents best response.

You can't actually achieve what you showed because of this.

And black is more active and better developed. The knight can't go to c3 to chase the queen as it's blocked by the pawn, so it often has to go to an undesirable square like a3.

Even though white hopes to achieve the broad pawn centre with e4 and d4, that you showed, it isn't possible. White often ends up with an isolated pawn on d4.

Instead, white's best option is Nf3-d4 and maintaining the e4 pawn, while allowing the knight to develop to c3.

The best response is the Open Sicilian.

For example:

Now white is better developed, more active, on the attack.

In that case, well, the Open Sicilian. Why do you think there are so many lines against it? It's been used many times and has succeeded many times.

It is best to play Nf3, preparing to play d4.

Just play open sicilian. Sometimes you can castle opposite sides which is a lot of fun.

@28

Opposite side castling can be fun, but not always for white.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044020 
King's side castling is safer.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044347

I like the Open one with night f3

You can respond with open Sicilian. Open variation of Sicilian is the only way to white to gain chance to have advantage. It begins with white after c5 playing Nf3 followed by d4 after black plays Nc6 or d6. After that to prevent trouble, black is required to exchange its c5 pawn with your d4 pawn where after your recapture with the knight black may play Nf6 attacking your e4 pawn and you defend it by playing Nc3. Now your opening split into many variations based on what black play which are
•Classical (Having both knights developed, if not and if already then striking in the centre with e4)
•Dragon (Fianchettoing dark bishop)
•Najdorf (a6)
•scheveningen (e3)

In some cases you may may face e6 which is known as french variation where you still play d4 but after exchange the game is different

After the exchange, black rather than attacking your e4 pawn first may play g6 to fianchetto its dark bishop. This is known as "accelerated dragon variation". You can develop your another knight.

Sometimes your oppenent may want to fianchetto its dark bishop very early and may play g6 right after Nf3. Play d4 and continue as same

Keep in mind that everything mentioned above is just game going into a variation not end of theory. You must know theory of every variation mentioned

@Post #31

The Diagrams and some of the Statements made by Supergamer are wrong.

However, I applaud him for at least trying. Not many players below 1k try to play or understand the Sicilian.

I will show a diagram below to help fix Supergamer diagram.

The above diagram is starting position for most of the Open Sicilian lines.

On move 5 - Depending on what move Black plays it will change the name of the line.

5…a6 is Sicilian Nadjorf

5…Nc6 is The Classical Sicilian

5…e6 is Sicilian Schevengain which I am spelling badly

5…g6 is Sicilian Dragon

REAL MEN play the Open Sicilian, agreed.

Open is good but it's a huge amount of theory... for club players I recommend starting with anti-sicilians and gradually moving to play the open lines. 
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. b3 - the Westerenin attack is pretty rare but quite powerful, Kramnik says he prefers this over his own variation
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. c3 - an alternative is the alapin here, which is stronger against the French sicilian than other variations
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. f3 - the princ variation, scores very well at club level, will allow you to bypass a ton of theory while you're starting out
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 - the rossolimo is now practically considered the main line here, it actually is preferred by the newer engines.
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. b4 - if you prefer something more exciting the Portsmouth gambit scores well even at higher elos
1. e4 c5 2. a3 - as another poster mentioned the Mengarini line is also very tricky

After that, if you really want to learn the open sicilian lines, I think you need to play both sides. Otherwise I think you're not really going to understand all the different positions or remember all the theory. So start with the french sicilian as black and learn the kan / taimanov / four knights, then play the other side as white, etc.. Then mess around with the najdorf / dragon / etc. as black for a while, rinse and repeat.

2.c4 is a nice idea but I dont like commiting our structure so early. The d4 square is so much weaken, even though we have a nice clamp on d5, Black can always defend that square with a pawn, disabling us to put a piece there. I think the best response for the sicilian has always been the open sicilian, we should accept Black's challenge in having an imbalanced, open and sharp game because that's where we can get the most of our advantage.

a3 (Mengarini) Sicilian of course 😂 literally if you follow the most common moves you get to this position

If ye wants t' know the strength o' an openin', look at master game statistics. Opinions be meaningless when we 'ave definitive answers.

Kind of but not quite. For one, masters games stretch back to the 1950s and the game has changed alot since then. Secondly... masters will often play certain openings in certain tournament situations. Like they'll play the Slav exchange for a draw, not for a win. But you can play it for a win too if you want, and it can be very sharp, it's just most often played for a draw. So you'd need to drill down in the stats into the particular variation to see that. The other thing is grandmasters these days typically play suboptimal moves to throw off the opponent and win that way, but anyone shy of master level is not going to benefit as much from that since your opponent won't know all the theory in the first place.

C3 protects the d4 center square ⬛ ⬜ while the position is better than black.c3!!