Tame the Sicilian: The Alapin Variation MoveTrainer® Opening course by GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov & by GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly

Breakthrough Anti-Sicilian
Solves 1…c5 In 110 Minutes

Bypass time-sucking reams of theory after 1.e4 c5… tame Black’s raging counterplay by move two… and blow away even the most booked-up Sicilian specialists with breakthrough novelties you can start playing in the next 110 minutes!

Here’s the challenging reality for every 1.e4 player:

The game will turn into a Sicilian about 46% of the time.

In every game, one could be staring down the barrel of a nuclear Najdorf… a mind-boggling Sveshnikov… or a fire-breathing Dragon. With each system demanding hundreds of hours of prep.

Worse, the main lines with 2.Nf3 and 3.d4 strap a ticking time bomb on your back. Better make that fleeting activity count. Or Black’s superior center pawns and heavy artillery on the c-file will take over!

Fortunately, you only need 110 minutes to turn the tables to your favor.

That’s the length of the Quickstarter video of Tame The Sicilian: Alapin Variation by Rustam Kasimdzhanov (2004 FIDE World Champion) and Surya Shekhar Ganguly (2009 Asian Continental Champion).

Kasimdzhanov and Ganguly were former analysts for the 15th World Champion Vishy Anand, producing stunning novelties in every opening they touch.

This time, they bring you a breakthrough repertoire which solves the Sicilian by…

Planting The Game Firmly Within
Your Turf With 2.c3

The Alapin is undodgeable. Which means Black is playing your game as early as move two.

Plus, any reply which doesn’t cover the d4-square — like 2…a6 (O’Kelly Variation), 2…g6 (Hyper-Accelerated Dragon), or 2…e6 (à la Taimanov) — gives you the full center the second player so desires.

White threatens to take over the center

Now, we’re not going to pretend that the Alapin is brand new. It’s been covered more times than we can count. What we can say for certain, though, is that…

This Alapin Sicilian is a trailblazer, because the authors made sure it is.

We will create our own theory and not follow the traditional path… to pose maximum practical problems for Black over the board in any tournament game.

— Rustam Kasimdzhanov and Surya Ganguly

Besides preparing openings at the championship level, Kasimdzhanov also coached the German team which won the 2011 European Team Championship… and trained title contenders Fabiano Caruana and Sergey Karjakin.

Drawing inspiration from decades of analysis, Kasimdzhanov filled this repertoire to the brim with unexplored novelties, and challenged the main lines of the Alapin.

Here’s how he handled the four most common answers to the Alapin:

✅ Against 2…Qa5, pinning your c-pawn, you’ll misplace the enemy queen with a kingside fianchetto. Then take over the center anyway! A plan that’s played in only 3 out of 100 games.

✅ After 2…d6, you’ll zoom to a queenless middlegame — reached only 3 times in GM practice — where your pieces dominate their counterparts.

✅ You’ll disrupt Black’s queenside after 2…Nf6 with a “tempo-losing” bishop sortie, which was seen only once at the pro level.

✅ And against the popular 2…d5, you’ll drag Black into a tactical skirmish, where a seemingly minor slip gives you a winning position in less than 15 moves!

White is down a piece, but Black will soon be down a game!

Of course, the second player has other moves at their disposal. But that’s where the rest of the repertoire comes in. It covers almost every set-up by Black in 272 “novelty-rich” MoveTrainer variations…

Which is a tiny fraction of the theory you’ll have to learn in the main lines.

Fuse these cutting-edge lines with 16 hours of video instruction by Ganguly, who has earned over 350 raving reviews…

And you’ll see why we’re confident that Tame The Sicilian: Alapin Variation can pump up your score with 1.e4.