My Best Games #9: Slaying the Dragon Again!
The Dragon is just about as interesting a beast as we all imagine it to be. That is, in chess. What I mean by that is that it's been proven that white has a clear, moderately large advantage in the main line of the Dragon. White gets an attack on the kingside that is clear as day and very easy to carry out successfully, but black too has very strong counterplay, which you cannot underestimate. The play is very sharp and dynamic Of course, the Dragon is sound. I'm not saying that it's unsound. Simply put, you need to play very accurately as black to keep the balance, hold back the attack on the kingside, and explode the white king on the queenside. As black, it's been played by some of the most prominent super-GM names in the world. Former World Champion Kasparov wielded it. Current World Champion Magnus Carlsen used it. World Championship Candidates Teimour Radjabov and Vasyl Ivanchuk played it. Speed chess demon Hikaru Nakamura played it. Players of all skill levels play it. It is one of those openings that you can either love or hate playing. I personally don't like playing it, but love playing against it.
Long intro.
As you've probably guessed by now, today's game is a Dragon!
Firstly, let's do our opponent checkup. @boyka67 was my opponent. Their rating at the time was 1988 to my 2013, so another pretty evenly rated matchup. Now boyka67's rating has dropped slightly to 1943, but they had a peak rating of 2064.
Opening: Sicilian Dragon. It started out as an Accelerated Dragon (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 g6) but transposed to the Main Line Dragon. I go more in-depth about the Dragon in the analysis of the last Dragon game that I posted in my blog, and also in today's analysis. talking about the previous Dragon game, I will post it below so that you can easily compare he two games, which I suggest you do. I bet you'll be surprised at how similar they are... Also, if you haven't seen the whole post about the said game, here's the link to it:
https://www.chess.com/blog/colorfulcake/my-best-games-3-sicilian-dragon-kingside-attack
Looked over it? Great. Now back to our game today.
In the game I played the exact same combination that was seen in the previous game - actually, you know what? I'm just going to call it Dragon #1. Much easier to type and so I don't need to think of different ways to say it. Anyway, as I was saying before I interrupted myself, the combination played in this game is literally almost the exact same as the one in Dragon #1. You'll see how.
Now I'll post Dragon #1 right here directly before Dragon #2 (what I'm calling today's game) so you don't have to switch tabs to see both games at once. Both games have full analysis.
Enjoy!
Two dragons are enough for a day!
Now to finish the blog, some puzzles! Tell me whether or not you guys like the puzzles in the comments below!
#1. From Ian Rogers vs. Yuri Averbakh, Manila 1979. Rogers missed a win here after Averbakh came to his room during adjournment and offered a draw, giving the line 1... Kg5 2. g4 Kf6 3. Ke4 Kg5 4. Kf3 repeating. Rogers agreed to the draw, but other GMs told him he'd been conned. Can you do better than the Australian GM?
