An opening course for Black (ECO B90-B99)
5...a6 develops nothing. It takes b5 away from White's bishop and both knights, and it gets ...b5 ready, and that is enough to have built the most analysed opening in chess on top of it. The pawn that follows is ...e5, hitting the knight in the middle and accepting a hole on d5 in exchange for the initiative. This course answers all seven of White's serious sixth moves plus the queen and rook tries a club opponent reaches for, and it stops where its sources stop rather than guessing at the twenty-fifth move of the Poisoned Pawn.
This course is part of your daily work.
It keeps a white knight and the light-squared bishop out of b5, where they would hit d6 and never be chased away. It also prepares ...b5, which takes queenside space and threatens ...b4 to knock the knight off c3, the piece defending e4. Two jobs, no development, and it works because Black has time in this structure.
The move that makes it a Najdorf rather than a Scheveningen. It kicks the knight out of the centre and stops e4-e5 forever, and it costs Black control of d5. White spends the whole middlegame trying to land a piece there, usually a knight via c3 or e2. Black spends it covering the square: the bishop to e6, a knight to b6 or f6, sometimes ...b5 first so the knights have squares.
In most Sicilians the queen's knight belongs on c6. Here it goes to d7, so it can come to b6 to hold d5, or to c5 to hit e4, and so the c-file stays clear for a rook. Getting ...b5 in first makes the whole formation work, which is why White so often answers with a2-a4.
Against 6.Bg5 and the English Attack, White castles long and throws the g and h pawns forward while Black plays on the queenside with ...b5-b4. Neither side gets to defend. The habit worth building is counting: how many moves does the attack need, and does the pawn on b4 arrive before the pawn on g5 does.
Learning order, one scoresheet per chapter. The coach serves review one line a day; enter any line directly when you want it now.
White's sixth move decides the game's character, and four of the seven serious ones develop the queen's bishop. On g5 it goes for the throat and rules out ...e5; on e3 it starts the modern main line, with pawns coming down the board behind it; on e2 it plays chess; on c4 it stares at f7. The first three all end with both kings under fire, which is why the Najdorf is the opening it is.
Three sixth moves that commit a pawn before a piece. 6.f4 builds an attack straight away, 6.h3 and 6.g3 are slower and both aim at the same square everything in this opening aims at. None of them stops ...e5, and against the first one there is a good reason to play something else.
Grandmasters have played twenty-two different sixth moves here, and a club opponent who does not want to memorise the English Attack will play one of them. These five are the ones a whole readable chapter is devoted to: a rook lift, three queen moves and a bishop to d3. None of them is bad. All of them give Black a specific way to punish the loss of time.
Club games that started in the Sicilian Najdorf produced these tactics, and you solve every one from Black's side, the seat you actually sit in. Difficulty follows your solving, the same as the puzzle room.
The Sicilian Najdorf is the chess opening that begins 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6, and it is filed under ECO B90-B99. This course teaches it from Black's side in 12 drills across 3 chapters, with a coach note on the moves that need one, every position checked with Stockfish at depth 20, and every plan credited to the author who wrote it down.
Lines you will drill
Theory credited to
3 branches are deliberately not drilled here, and the course records which and why rather than leaving the gap silent.
Questions
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