Winning with the Sicilian defense: A complete repertoire against 1 e4

A few years ago I was struggling with my defense against 1.e4; I was playing 1...e5 and usually facing against the Ruy Lopez Chigorin variation, the Vienna game, King's Gambit, Scotch Game, etc. My results were nothing to be proud of, especially with the Ruy Lopez (Spanish), since besides losing a fair amount of games, I would end up playing defensively most of the time, and suffering slowly while getting smothered by my opponents. That is when Silman came to my rescue. Imagine my excitement when I saw the title of this book, which promised to solve all my problems against e4. Once I started playing this opening, which by the way is the Sicilian Accelerated Dragon, most of my problems disappeared. I started finding myself in situations in which I was attacking my opponents, instead of defending all the time and my record (and consequently my rating) improved considerably. Silman does an outstanding job in presenting the main ideas of this opening and in providing concrete lines without cluttering them with an abundance of variations. This can be done because he is writing for the player playing black, and therefore, just presents the best line for black and only variations according to what white chooses to do. There are a few cases in which he offers a couple of different alternatives for black, and the choice depends on how aggressive you want to be on a specific game. For example, at one point he says "11...Rd8 is perfect for those players who hunger for violence..." and if you are not one of those you would pick the other option, which in that case was 11...b6. There are several reasons for choosing the Accelerated Dragon as your choice against e4. If you are an intermediate player, say between 1500 and 1800, you will see that your opponents are used to playing against the Dragon, but not against the Accelerated Variation. This means that when they try to follow the usual plans, they will get some nasty surprises. Besides that, Silman focuses on lesser known lines that provide excellent counterplay opportunities; for example, against the Maroczy Bind, he picks the Gurgenidze variation, and against the Smith-Morra Gambit, a solid line that will leave white praying to get at least some compensation for his pawn. The main lines covered in this book are the Classical Line (7.Be2), what Silman calls the Weekend Variation (7.f3), Lines with 7.Bc4, Early Nxc6 Lines, the Maroczy Bind (when white plays 5.c4), the Rossolimo Variation (3.Bb5), Closed Lines (2.Nc3), the Alapin Variation (2.c3), the Smith-Morra Gambit (3.c3), the Grand Prix Attack (2.f4) and Other Rare Variations like the Wing Gambit or 2.g3. It is a shame that the publisher of the book (Chess Digest) has closed for business some time after Ken Smith, the Fide Master who owned it, died. I am not sure what the other options for buying this book are, but I hope somebody comes out with a new edition soon. This can help a lot of players that are having trouble facing 1.e4 with black!