There is an idea which I think is a wonderful bit of knowledge to have for the c3 player. It is advocated by both Rosentalis and Hartley in their tome on the c3 sicilian, as well as Sveshnikov in his recently released manual on the c3 Sicilian. It has been my experience that of the two most common replies to 2.c3, 2…Nf6 and 2…d5, the latter is by far the most common. The idea involves offering an early exchange of queens with dxc5. One line which I have seen in practice is 1.e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 4.d4 Nf6 5.Nf3 Bg4 and now 6.cxd5!? giving us the following position.

Here, if black accepts the exchange of queens, then he seemingly enters an ending down a pawn. However, this ending is actually the most testing, since after Qxc5, white will win tempo off the queen to develop rapidly and bring pressure to black’s queenside immediately. One miniature, which I played in a tournament recently, followed this pattern to a quick conclusion.