myk99 wrote:
@ Duniel, well said, the pros and cons are spot on. Ive got plenty of "midnight oil" to burn. hahahaha.
If there is fear of the Yugoslav attack but you want to continue playing the Dragon, try looking into the Acc Dragon/Hyper Acc dragon, the main idea there is to reserve the d5 thrust as one movement rather than d6-d5 placing you a tempo up, but there are other sidelines you might want to look into ie. Rossolimo/Moroxy bind....and if hyper acc dragon 4.Qxd4.
Nah, thanks for the suggestion but the Accelerated Dragon is just not for me, people often relate it to the Regular Dragon, but it's completely different specially if white plays the positional boring Maroczy...
I find Chris Ward's Winning With Sicilian Dragon very instructive. Andrew Martin in his Starting Out: Sicilian Dragon recommends Chinese Dragon which I think is a very reasonable choice. It is fairly new, not theoretically extensive, completely deadly when white is unprepared (and, believe me, he very often is) and most of all it is sound (played by Carlsen among others). You can master that in 1 hour and go on winning.
I really do not think that you need to follow monthly updates, reasonable database with strong engine to analyze will be sufficient. Do not spend too much time memorizing theory, 1700 or 2000 can spend this time more productively. Play 10-20 training Yugoslav-games to see what people play and do your prepration accordingly.
As for Najdorf, Arizmendi and Moreno's Mastering the Najdorf is great and also Tony Kosten's Easy Guide to Najdorf in which he recommends some great lines against former mainline Bg5 without the need of memorizing realms of theory of Poisnd Oawn and the like.
What do you play in the Chinese Dragon if white plays 10.Bb3 instead of 10.0-0-0 ?
I play Accelerated Dragon lines, i.i 10...Nxd4 11. Bxd4 b5! after which castling long is not a good option for white anymore.