From Mark Weeks,
Your Guide to Chess.
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What's hot? What's not? Here are ten chess openings all players should be familiar with. Are you?

Since the most popular first move in chess is 1.e4, it follows that many of the most popular openings are King's Pawn Openings. Similarly, since the most popular response to 1.e4 is 1...c5, variations of the Sicilian Defense easily make any list of the top 10 openings.

Following this logic, the first of our most popular openings is 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 as shown in the diagram. The popularity of this variation is due to the combined popularity of the four well known variations that Black can choose with the next move.

• 5...a6 : Najdorf Variation
• 5...Nc6 : Classical Variation
• 5...e6 : Scheveningen Variation
• 5...g6 : Dragon Variation

For more about the diagrammed position, see Sicilian Defense - ...d6 Variations in our Repertoire Recommendations.

[If you would like to know how we chose the top-10 popular openings, see 'Behind This Article : Popular Chess Openings' in the link box].