It’s best to avoid this situation completely by playing e6, or more commonly, keeping the e pawn on it’s starting square of e7.Īnother main idea is to get your opponent to play b3 or b4. You would need to trade off the e pawn to get out of the way of your fianchetto’ed bishop. E5, while attacking the center of the board, completely blocks in your dark squared bishop. Here’s a video that helps show some of the main ideas of the Dragon.įirst of all, you want to avoid the move e5 if you are playing the Dragon. This way, you can exploit your opponent if they go “off the book,” or move out of order. When you play the Sicilian Dragon, it’s always important to understand basic traps that you’re going for. If you can castle your king safely before you push d5, then you will be in a nice position to start the game. Since you want to push d5 eventually, you’ll give white this diagonal at some point. Some players may have strong use of the e8-a4 diagonal with their bishop or queen if black opens up the diagonal with d6. It can be a nice way to retreat your king to safety without threats of the knights or light squared bishop on the queen side. This is played when a player wants to have a strong diagonal for the bishop quickly.
The hyper accelerated dragon is a variation of the Sicilian Dragon, but you move quickly to show your hand with 2…g6. This means the knight on c6 (which was moved instead of d6) can defend against an e5 push. This helps give black a semi-open file for the eventual Rc8 move, but also helps open the attack for the black bishop once fianchetto’d.īlack is able to play g6 quickly and even nf6 soon because the knight on f3 has been moved to d4. The game is considered open because black’s c pawn and white’s d pawn have been traded off. The accelerated Dragon occurs when black tries to play g6 without playing d6 first. If you want to play either the accelerated or hyper accelerated, you’ll want to make sure that you understand the risk of not playing d6 so you don’t fall into any traps. This can help save a tempo because you are not moving a piece twice in the opening (d6 followed by d5 later on). The idea of accelerating the dragon (or hyper accelerating it) means you skip playing d6, knowing you want to play d5. In most Sicilian games, black would love to play d5 at some point. Some players like to turn this opening into a more aggressive opening by playing g6 as quick as possible, sometimes abandoning d6 altogether. Traditionally you would play d6 on the second move to prevent the idea of black playing e5, forcing your kingside knight to move. The pawn structure of the Sicilian dragon Other Variations of the Dragon Sometimes plans are delayed because you have to prevent a back rank checkmate, but that is not a huge issue with the Sicilian Dragon. By delaying your development towards the center with the g6 move, you are giving your bishop the best diagonal it can have while also saving a pawn move later in the game. Qd2 O-Oįianchettoing a bishop on the kingside is always a nice way to prevent back rank checkmates later on. The ideal pawn structure leads to nice end game play and helps limit the movement of white’s knights. The Sicilian Dragon is characterized by this formation for black. This results in a fianchetto of the kingside bishop. The topic of this article will be centered around the Sicilian Dragon, which consists of black playing g6 at some point followed by Bg7. There are a ton of variations of the Sicilian and people have written many, many books on the subject. The main reason it’s so strong is because black does a great job preventing white from playing d4 easily and establishing a strong pawn center. The Sicilian Defense is arguably the best answer to white’s most common opening, 1. The Sicilian Dragon is a variation of the Sicilian Defense opening for black.
THE IDEAS BEHIND MODERN CHESS OPENINGS PGN CHESSGAMES HOW TO
How to play against the Sicilian Dragon.What does the Sicilian Dragon Look Like.
Purchase the entire eBook to learn how to play the Sicilian Dragon I’ll even throw in some games with some basic traps to watch out for. Today we’re taking a look at how to play the Sicilian Dragon and its variations, the accelerated dragon and hyper accelerated dragon. The Sicilian Defense can be broken down into four main variations: The Najdorf, The Classical Sicilian, The Dragon, and the Scheveningen.