Van Geet Opening: Sicilian Two Knights (A00)

This page collects the uncommon first moves: the Van Geet Opening 1.Nc3, little pawn moves like 1.a3 or 1.h3, and the setups that grow out of them. None of them fight for the centre at once, so the game is decided less by theory than by who develops faster and who leaves a piece loose.

The most frequent puzzle here shows how quickly that happens. After 1.h3 c6 2.g4 d5 3.Bg2 e5 4.d3 d4 White develops with 5.Bg5?? and simply hangs the bishop: the queen on d8 sees g5 along the open diagonal, and 5...Qxg5 wins a piece. Before moving a bishop to the edge, always check which enemy pieces already look at that square.

A second theme is the early queen. After 1.d4 c5 2.Nc3 cxd4 3.Qxd4 Nc6 4.Qh4 the white queen stands on the rim, and both sides start aiming at each other's queen. In one line Black played 4...Qa5 5.Bd2 Qb4, and White castled long with 6.O-O-O??, overlooking that the black queen on b4 attacks the queen on h4 along the fourth rank. 6...Qxh4 wins the queen outright. In another, 4...Nf6 5.Bg5 Qb6 6.e3?? ignored the attack on b2, which the bishop no longer defended after leaving c1: 6...Qxb2 wins a pawn and attacks the rook in the corner.

The lesson of all these positions is the same. When the opening is unusual, nothing works on autopilot. Count the defenders of every piece that has left its starting square, look at every open diagonal towards your queen and king, and ask what changed with the opponent's last move before you play your own. The puzzles below are drawn from exactly these moments, for both colours.