This is a sort of spot that often trips me up. I have no obvious developing moves or pieces to put pressure on, and I often end up making a move that overextends my pieces and comes back to bite me a later in the game.

The two moves I considered were:
Moving the kings pawn up two. Stops his pawn from advancing adds some control to the center.
Move the white bishop to c6. Attacking his pawn forcing him to move d3.


There's no major benefit I can see to any move and he doesn't have any particularly good responses aside from the obvious castle. At which point I'm going to work to fianchetto and castle myself. I don't really have any vision for where this game would go.

Would appreciate any advice since I am a noob repeatedly getting owned

I ended up moving the pawn in game.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the weakest "experienced" posters on this forum. Take the below advice with a grain of salt, and if anyone disagrees with any of it later in this thread, they're probably right.

I don't like e5; it creates a hole on d5 that seems like a long term weakness. And Bf6 does provoke d3, but that's not a win for you, it just frees white's dark squared bishop to develop. Your biggest issue, imo, is finding a way to get castled, so I'd consider g6/Bg7. Also you have a chance to grab some nice space on the queenside with b5, but I'd focus on castling first.

Neither move is particularly promising.

Bc6 is just slow. You've already developed that bishop. You need to develop your other pieces.

As BJJ touched on, e5 has some small positives but bigger negatives. You've already got d4 covered, so all this gains you is some control over f4. That's not completely worthless, but it's not particularly valuable either. What's going to be happening on f4 anytime soon? But you permanently weaken d5, which is probably going to suck for you.

Try to develop as quickly as possible. A simple, good plan for your level here would be e6 (keeps some control over the d5 square), to be followed by Be7, 0-0, and then figuring out where you want your queen to go.

Bc6 is fine here. it's not the kind of position where one reorganizing move right now is going to put you so far behind in development that you're going to lose in 5 more moves.

my vote is for the g6/Bg7 plan. fianchettoing in these games where white doesn't play d4 is never a bad idea. it fits right in with the normal sicilian dark square strategy.

e5 is completely reasonable here. The weakness of d5 is not very significant - if a Knight goes there you can just take it. Still I don't really like e5 just because it leads to a pretty blocked and equal game where it's going to be hard for Black to create any real chances.

Bc6 - again it's a reasonable move, but in general you only want to make it in connection with some specific plan. In the current position, it supports the plan of e6 and d5. However it is not strictly necessary to start with Bc6 and e6 right away is also fine.

And as others have mentioned, g6, Bg7, and 0-0 is another typical way to play this position.

g6 is natural but allows White to go e5, immediately taking back the bishop pair. So i think i prefer e5, and worry about how to make a pawn break later -- either d5 or f5 will be an option.

...g6
e5 dxe5
Nxe5 Be6

This disturbs me a little. You have a piece still undeveloped (your dark square bishop), and that is in fact keeping you from castling. Therefore, I would say you have a very obvious development goal at this point. The only question is which way -- with ...e6 and ...Be7, or ...g6 and ...Bg7.

ok yeah that looks good for Black (need to calculate some stuff after Qf3, but I expect Black is at least OK), so g6 is fine

Thanks for all the responses guys. I'm reading and thinking about everything posted here, and I think I've definitely learned some new things about how to approach the game.

He did go for d5 with the knight which left his pawn undefended so I took the pawn. That seems like the natural move to me. Is there any reason I should have traded knights instead?

No, take the free pawn. He meant that if the knight eventually went to d5, after defending the e4 pawn.