The Complexity of the Dragon

I have been playing the Sicilian Dragon for quite some time now. I never took the time to learn too much of the theory, but rather practiced it in online blitz and rapid games by focusing on executing the main ideas.

At first, I would win a lot of my games with the dragon, as most people would try to play "classically" via 0-0, Be2/Bc4, etc. Those positions would usually favor the black side, as I felt quite comfortable in those positions, especially with my strong bishop on g7 and the pressure down the c-file. However, soon as I increased my rating on chess.com, players would play the Yugoslav Attack with Be3 and f3, where they long castled and went for a huge attack. I knew the basics of the position, but didn't quite know how to counterattack correctly, so I lost most of the games.

Lately though, I have been working on getter better at playing the dragon by trying to learn more theory, as well as spending more time during the critical positions in my games. One exciting game I played recently (online on chess.com) was this one:

Although I won, it wasn't a perfect game. I still have a lot of work to do on the dragon, but I think by playing this opening, it will help my understand complicated positions better, and that will overall help me as a chess player.