That's true.

I've been playing some casual games with facebook's chess pro application, and the thing that boggles my mind is that nearly everyone plays the sicilian defense, and most of them then decline the smith-morra in some offbeat fashion, giving me a very easy game.

People are way too afraid of their opponent's preparation. I guess I shouldn't complain, because it's giving me easy wins, but wow ...

Seriously, a dozen or so games we me starting 1.e4, and they're ALL sicilians, and all but one decline the smith-morra, and all of those declines are simply bad choices, allowing me extremely favorable positions.

People need to learn that you can't play chess scared.

I think all the Sicilian players will say the same exact thing to all the Closed Sicilian, Grand Prix, Smith Morra, and c3 Sicilian players out there, because the white player is afraid of the "20 move preperation." Yes, if you are a Grandmaster you will play the Poisoned Pawn Najdorf all the way down to the perpetual check at move 34, completely out of memorization, but if you are an amateur, they will be taken out of book very quickly, or not memorize all that. I know variations of the Sicilian Dragon 20+ moves deep, but my opponent will probably go out of book theory quickly, and the first 10+ moves of the game are just getting into the correct variation of Dragon. Buy a book on the Sicilian ("Starting out: The Sicilian" is a good choice), read the whole thing, and after every game look up the book lines in MCO.

Anyway, against the Morra I'm shocking you don't see every opponent trying to set up the Siberian trap. It's what I do, but no one ever falls for it.

This "playing scared" also applies a lot to "phantom attacks," or attacks that look powerful, but don't go anywhere.

The difference being, I think, that the Morra is a legitimate opening (as are the c3, 3.Bb5, etc ...) so it's not like a player choosing those lines is picking grossly inferior moves.

eg, if somebody wants to decline the Morra with 1.e4 c5 2.d4 cd 3.c3 Nf6 I can't give them a hard time for it. When a player, on the other hand, plays 3.... e6 4.cd d5 5.Nc3 Bb4? (hugely advantageous for white compared to the winawer french) they're just throwing away points. (And that was one of the better oddball ways of declining I've run into lately).

Most Morra players lost to the siberian once, learned their lesson, and now know better.

Exactly.. Choosing the anti-Sicilians I have in my reportoire wasn't (fully) motivated by fear for preparation, though I'll fully admit it's a part of it since when I do play like main-line Sicilians I'll run into players who will blitz out the first 20-30 moves even if I branch off into a less traveled path.
Fact is I just don't like the main-line Sicilians, certainly not as much as my anti-Sicilians. I play them (save the Alapin) in a very main-line'ish fashion though, I suppose that's what really counts.

Will some one post the moves to the Siberian trap? I'm curious to see what it is.

I thought I would share a game with you guys. It's from How to Win at Chess Ten Golden Rules to Follow. A great book.

R. Fischer-R. Fine

1.e4 e5
2.Nf3 Nc6
3.Bc4 Bc5
4.b4 Bb4
5.c3 Ba5
6.d4 ed4
7.0-0 dc3
8.Qb3 Qe7
9.Nc3 Nf6
10.Nd5 Nd5
11.ed5 Ne5
12.Ne5 Qe5
13.Bb2 Qg5
14.h4 Qh4
15.Bg7 Rg8
16.Rfe1 Kd8
17.Qg3 1-0

If 17._Qg3 than 18.Bf6 is mate. In the book Daniel King used this as an example of the first three golden rules. Rule 1 open with a center pawn. Rule 2 bring out all of your pieces. Pule 3 castel as quicly as polssible. White wins because he followed all the rules and black did not King explains, black just got greedy.

This was an offhand game. Fischer difinitely did not regularly play the Evans.

Good game. Thanks for sharing.

--Fromper

I believe that was a blitz game, wasn't it?

The Siberian Trap:
1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3 Nc6 5. Nf3 e6 6. Bc4 Qc7 7. O-O Nf6 8. Qe2 Ng4 9. h3 Nd4, and black wins.

No, but it was an informal game.

Fine was not happy that Fischer published it.

Usually when I play the compromised black stops my from following in Fischer's footsteps by capturing on c3 before developing his king knight.

i suggest you study the game kasparov-annand in this game kasprov used the evans

Truly you cannot study the Evans Gambit without seeing how Morphy played it. The man was a genius, it's truly regrettable he did not pursue chess more during his lifetime. Any annotated books on Morphy games should have it, or if you like, I just posted in another thread a link here: Chess Games Database which I really like for finding GM games to study (I'm not affiliated with the site.)

Hope this helps.