Hyper Accelerated Dragon: White's Death By Simplification

Thanks for your reply, pfren. It sounds like you know this from experience. From what little I've read on the Maroczy Bind, it seems to be the strongest reply to the Sicilian defense (by the number of chapters devoted to it). It seems like the only way to deal with the Bind is (essentially) to attack c5 or e5 in order for black to play d5 without dropping a pawn for nothing. Is that how you see it?

Black can never (almost) afford ...d5 in the Maroczy. This is an option in the Hedgehog system, which is another beast (quite sound but difficult to play- essentially "the art of doin nothing" both colors involved).

There are a few "active" replies to the Maroczy. Pity they are unsound.

The sound replies are just depressing: Black has just to sit on his limited space, trying to make the apropriate piece exchanges, and having to suffer inferior endgames, queenside attacks, kingside attacks, as well as other unpleasant things...

How does the alapin variation do against the hyper accelerated dragon?

Welcome jphillips! I suspect the hyper-accelerated Dragon would have more success against the Alapin than it would against the Maroczy Bind. The fianchettoed dark-square bishop has at least one of white's center pawn phalanx in its sights and ... d5 is more doable (probably early in the game instead of later). Then again, I'm just going on intuition. I defer to pfren :)

What's the best way to learn "the art of doin' nothing"?

Sergey Shipov's monstrous 2-volume book on the Hedgehog, as well as studying games of the great masters of the opening.

I think the hedgehog requires a very tactical eye. If you simply make your moves on autpilot you'll quickly find yourself in an inferior position because you didnt anticipate/stop the opponents plan.

I highly recommend studying mihai subas games. I believe he is/was one of the most talented hedgehog users we ever had. Another strong name is the Russian Swede Ulf andersson.

Thank for the suggestions, I'll look into those (or rather, note those suggestions down and go back to them after my chess improves a bit).

When people say "hedgehog", does that imply a Maroczy bind as well?

IS THERE A BOOK ON THE HYPER ACCELERATED DRAGON???

There are quite a few, but unfortunately none of them is written in capitals.

Is there any data to back up this very strong claim?

I find it hard to believe the Maroczy Bind scores 90-95% for white at higher levels, which is what that math works out to.  Accelerated lines would be utterly absent from master level play if this were the case, which they aren't.

would be interested in your comments on the apparent weakness of the hyper accelerated dragon noted in this paper.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2472783

Doesn't look like a paper I could care to read... sorry for that.

chess magic 5 You commented this after the move 7.Bc4 -> "one of the main lines " . but main line is one and only and cant be more than 1 ..... :D thanks......

check this game!!

Hi. Instead of commenting on your opening, I'm going to make a comment on your mid-game. In move 14, after white plays Nxd5, instead of responding with Bxg4, I think a far better move for black would be Qe5, thus not only saving the Queen, but threatening check-mate in 1. White then is pretty much forced to play Qe2 to prevent checkmate and also save it's own Queen. Black can then play Qxe4+ and also threaten to take the pawn on g2 with the Queen on the very next move (which white can't prevent due to the check it now faces). However white does have some counterplay, as it can then go Nxe7+ on the following move. So to prevent this, instead of actually playing Qxg2, black may instead want to play something like Bf5, and then perhaps follow it up by getting one of its rooks involved (Rd8) thus putting more pressure on white's knight on d5, and indirectly threatening white's rook on d1 as well. In any case, Black will be at least 1 pawn up and in significantly better position to win from here on.

may i ask what's the possible continuation for 1.e4-c5 2.Nf3-g6 3. d4-cd4 4.Nd4-Bg7 5.Nc3-Nc6 and now white captures the knight by Nxc6???? what's the possible continuation for both side????

I just spewed water ALL OVER my computer screen!