Ideas in the Accelerated Dragon??

Hi all

going to have a look at the accelerated dragon against 1.e4. Anyone help with understanding the opening and its aims/goals, and what to look out for.

Generally the idea is to prevent a Yugoslav attack by saving a tempo (d7-d5 in one move instead of two), giving Black better resources to deal with White's threats if he attempts to castle queensided and launch the kingside pawns. There are many ways for White to stumble into a totally lost position with one mistake in the early stages, due to the slight difference in move order from Black.

The give and take is that it allows White to play the Maroczy Bind, which clamps down positionally on Black. This is far from the end of the world of course, if you read up thoroughly on the concepts you need to know to improve your position in those lines. Some of those ideas are fairly advanced. Often you're positionally in trouble but there's some arcane tactic that saves your bacon. Such is life in the Sicilian. Such is life as Black in general, really.

If you have no idea what the general ideas are in the Accelerated Dragon, what is your basis for playing it?  Random?  If so, that's idiotic.

Don't base your play on an opening that you either pulled out of a hat or chose because you think the name is cool.  Base your choice of opening on your style of play, strengths, and weaknesses.

I tend to understand how to make something out of what appears to be nothing, whether that be endgame play, finding a single weakness and creating a second one on the board in what initially looks like a drawish, static position, etc.  I'm not one of those utter morons that's like "Oh no, we traded Queen's, I can't mate my opponent in 20 moves or less and am so ADD or ADHD that I can't handle a long game!" or that thinks all games in any particular opening will always be tactical, positional, reach an endgame early, etc.

It is for this reason that I play Flank openings as White (1.b4 mostly, occasionally 1.Nf3), and solid lines like the Petroff and QGD as Black.

To come up with a question on the ideas of an openings, saying you are going to take it up, seems really dumb.  Determine your strengths, get your over-the-board rating to at least 1800, and only then, come back and ask about what openings you should consider taking up.

Wow man thats heavy 

Dzindzi built an opening repertoire based on the Advance Dragon. It's got some cool tricks, but there's a reason almost nobody +2200 uses it in games that matter.

My advice: go study Dzindzi's videos then choose a different opening.

An IM (I forget who) who had had great success on the White side of the Advance French wrote that he originally took up the variation merely because it boasted the shortest section in MCO...

So that could be why he wants to play it, because it's something with not too much theory (a valid reason IMO), or maybe it was recommended to him by a friend, etc...and from what I can tell, this is regardless his method of learning the ideas so he can determine whether it suits him or not...

What is "accelerated dragon"

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=accelerated+dragon

what's the difference between:

And this:

In the latter, Black doesn't retain the possibility of breaking with ...d5 in one turn.

You know I play pirc in a similar fashion:

Look, until you learn English, shut up.  Nowhere do I state that person is dumb or idiotic.  Try re-reading that first sentence.  Nowhere does it say HE is idiotic, which is what you state.  If the basis for playing the opening was completely random, then the BASIS (not the person) is idiotic.

If you are going to quote me and then ridicule, g*d d*mmit at least don't misquote me and start accusing.

And your conclusion of me being "Pretencious" as a response to "Are you really that good?" -- Try validating your conclusion.  Try going to the following link and look it up:

http://www.uschess.org/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,181/

And you'll see I'm 15 points shy of master.

So if you are going to talk sh*t - first off, don't misquote people, only a douche does that, and second, get your facts straight.

This is Alejandro Ramirez' analysis of the Caruana-Carlsen game. Clearly, he believes that White's position out of the opening was fine, and he blames Black's struggles on his choice of the Accelerated Dragon. 

EDIT: Here's the link

http://en.chessbase.com/post/sinquefield-08-streak-stopped-event-clinched

I see that's kinda hard to read. Let me try again:

Source: Chessbase: http://en.chessbase.com/post/sinquefield-08-streak-stopped-event-clinched

No kidding.

In essence, I think the principal key ideas in the accelerated dragon can be summarised by comparing it to the classical dragon:

There are imo, three key differences to be aware of, two of them relating to d6 v Nc6, and one relating to playing Nf6 before vs after g6 is played:

1)1.e4 c5 2.nf3:  2..Nc6 vs 2..d6.

Both Nc6 and d6 are primarily played firstly for developing purposes, but also to restrain an e5 push by white. This second reason is very important for the accelerated dragon, some fairly testing variations include a Nxc6, followed by e5 from white such as:

This type of variation is not really possible in the normal dragon, because d6 has been played to restrain an e5 push, so white cannot trade on c6 to remove the defender of this square.

2) The flip side of the previous difference is that often black will be looking to free his position with a ..d5 break. Having played ..d6 in the standard dragon, this now takes two moves to acheive. If 2..Nc6 (or 2..g6 HAD) is played, we can acheive this in one move.

This has important implications in some variations. The strongest try by white against the classical dragon is thought to be the yugoslav attack, this setup however in ineffective when black has a single extra tempo to play ..d5 with:

3) The final difference has to do with when ..Nf6 is played. Notice in the normal dragon nf6 is played quicker because there is no risk of the Nxc6 and e5 variations. Nf6 plays an important role by essentially forcing black to play Nc3 (f3 is really the only independent option, but it is !?). The result of forcing Nc3 is that c4 cannot be played. Allowing an early c4 is the main drawback to the accelerated move orders:

This setup, known as the maroczy bind is quite challenging for black, and the reason the accelerated setup is not used a lot at high levels, although it is played quite regularly by tiviakov among others.

Something to realise is that, in general, the variations allowed by the accelerated move orders tend to be more positional in nature, opposed to the often sharp, tactical, classical dragon variations.

It is difficult to give you all the ideas of the various variations in the acc dragon, this is mainly because of the variations flexibility, which allows for many different plans, although the main plan tends to remain as ..d5.

As a final note, I will quickly show the main difference between the accelerated 2..Nc6, and the hyper accelerated 2..g6 move order, which is the one I prefer:

By playing 2..g6 first, the bishop can get to g7 earlier, and you also deprive white of some of the Nxc6 options followed by Qd4 (which Ill show in next diagram), as well as some anti sicilians such as the rossolimo with Bb5, attempting to take the c6 knight (which will no longer be there in the 2..g6 variation). However, this comes at the cost of temporarily weakening control of d4, which allows one additional variation:

So it comes down to either play against the Qxd4 variation, or playing against the rossolimo, and an early Nxc6 Qd4 thingy (not really dangerous, but it's one less variation).

As mentioned before, what I posted here doesn't really cover middle game plans, but that is mostly because they are so varied it would take me a very long time to explain them. However, understanding what black seeks to gain by his move order over the classical dragon, and what he loses should shed some light on some of blacks goals.

In summary, the accelerated dragon is completely sound, and is played much more positionally than the classical. The main plans tend to involve the pawn break ..d5, however this becomes complicated in some variations where white restrains it, such as the maroczy, where ..b5 or ..f5 is often played, and in the classical setup, where black will often play with a5 or b5.

The post is a bit lengthy, but hopefully it helped.

I have to admit my understanding of the Gurgenidze lines is limited, as i've always prefered some more offbeat attempts against the maroczy.

Is Carlsen's 10.a5 11.a4 plan currently prefered in theory over the more classical a6 and b5 ideas that are typical of the Gurgenidze? or was he just playing a more offbeat line? which of course would be typical for Carlsen.

Thanks everyone for the constructive replies (well almost everyone lol lol lol)

xplayerjx,

After 6. Nc3Bg7

Isn't white in danger of losing a pawn...

In the maroczy diagram? yes, but whites next move is usually either Be3, guarding the knight, or Nc2 avoiding exchanges.