Greetings chess friends!
Once again in this new post a yet another instructive sampler game on my new pet opening the Hyper Accelerated Dragon.
Why play the Hyper Accelerated Dragon? I personally like it because it is a low maintenance opening, unlike the Classical Dragon which demands a lot of theoretical study and updating. The Hyper Accelerated Dragon has quite a crafty move-order that often bust e4 players who wrongly treat it as a regular Classical Dragon. The Yugoslav Attack doesn't really work against the Hyper Accelerated Dragon.
Having the Classical Dragon in my repertoire for years I was able to appreciate the potential of the Hyper Accelerated Dragon. I was able to compare black's king safety on both openings and personally concluded that the black king in the Hyper Accelerated Dragon is very much safer because it is not as exposed to immediate attacks early in the opening, especially in the Yugoslav Attack. I also noticed that the play is not so razor sharp which makes the game more on the positional side. This is really good according to many GM's who believes that strategical play is better than route memorization to a learning chess player like myself.
So is the Hyper Accelerated Dragon an ultimate defense to 1.e4? After only having played it a few times I have to admit that I am slightly annoyed to reach the Maroczy Bind position (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 g6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.c4). I sense that in the Maroczy Bind black's chances to play for a win diminishes quite substantially as compared to the Classical Dragon. But this does not mean the chances to equalise has become futile. Theoretically, black in the Maroczy Bind has already a draw at hand but he must be willing to sit down toiling from a disadvantaged or comparatively difficult position. Black actually has very good chances to win if white over extends himself. The Maroczy Bind positions are very positional and quite dull that most 1.e4 players dont find it attractive to play anyway. And I have to say, since playing the Hyper Accelerated Dragon, it's still a very rare occasion for me to face the Maroczy Bind.
In fact, the following game of mine against a 2000+ rated player saw declining the chance to go for a Maroczy Bind. In our previous game he opted for the early 4.Qxd4 and lost (see previous blog post for details). This time he went for the Bc4-Bb3 idea instead and found out that black is still winning. Let's have a look and find out what happened (note sub analysis on the movelist pane for better understanding of the position):
As we saw, black seems to be doing OK against the mainline Bc4. We also notice that the endgame is just favourable for black which makes simplification very logical.
There you go. I hope that you have learned something from this post and may encourage you to consider this system as part of your repertoire. For relevant reading materials on Dragon systems just click HERE.
What do you think?
The Hyper Accelerated Dragon has quite a crafty move-order that often bust e4 players who wrongly treat it as a regular Classical Dragon.
Very true. I've made this mistake more times than I care to admit.
The Bind is far too drawish for my taste even if it is a fairly reliable way of achieving a minuscule advantage. If black knows what he's doing and trades off the queen and a knight while avoiding other unnecessary exchanges, it leads to a pretty miserable game that's incredibly difficult to win. No fun!
Nice game.
Very nice game. You exhibited some fine technique in the endgame.
Very instructive game, nice annotations, thanks.
Nice game!
Of course, after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 g6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 you're back to the normal Accelerated Dragon, not in Hyper country anymore.
I've never played those 8...a5 lines. Perhaps I should try them next time.
Thank you for making this-- I play the hyperaccelerated dragon myself and really enjoy these instructive posts.
good enough..
As a fellow accelerated player, I enjoyed looking over your game and reading your article. I find that I mostly screw up when I hit the late middlegame/endgame stage so it was instructive to look at how you handled simplifying the position.
the annotations were great, you really knew what you were doing after getting a slight advantage after the opening and the exchanges of the queens and minor pieces. nice game
I like this game, especially the way you turn the middlegame to a favorable ending. I play this line too, and I think a4 can be classified as a minor mistake. By the the way the Hyper Accelerated-term is not correct. The Accelerated Dragon is 1.e4,c5 2.Nf3, Nc6 3.d4, cxd4 4.Nxd4, g6. What you call Hyper Accelerated, its the Hungarian variation, which has a completely different theory, worked out by a Hungarian master named Elek Bakonyi. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 g6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4 Nf6 5.e5 Nc6 6.Qa4 is its main line. In your game its just a move order changing. In fact, the Hyper Accelerated line is just a move order changing.
Thank you for the input, sawin. Really appreciate sharing your thoughts about terminology/name of variation. I hope to clarify the matter below.
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6 - is termed the "Accelerated Dragon". Coined "accelerated" because the pawn move to d6 was ommited from the 2nd move and replaced it with 2...Nc6 accelerating piece development. The pawn move 2...d6 is the normal Sicilian Dragon.
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 g6 - is termed the "hyper version of the accelerated dragon" or simply put "Hyper Accelerated Dragon". Coined "hyper" to indicate that the pawn move to g6 is earlier than the Accelerated Dragon; the pawn move to g6 came earlier at 2nd move instead on the 4th move.
So what differences do they make? The move order difference, as we know, results to different opening variations that make up different opening theories. That's why in the Hyper Accelerated Dragon you have 4.Qxd4 as a possibility while in the Accelerated Dragon move order you have the possibilty of 3.Bb5 Rossolimo Variation.
To read more about it, look up these following books:
Cheers!
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