Looking to play vs. Sicilian Dragon as White

I'm looking to sharpen my skills when I'm White and having to play against the Sicilian Dragon. If interested, please send me on Online Challenge. My current Online Rating is 1187, but I'm willing to play against any rating. Thanks!

Buy Karpov's Best games and pay special note to his games against the dragon, especially against Korchnoi.  You can also keep current on the theory with the latest Informants.  Chessbase Magazine is a decent alternative.

A good starting point would be Fischer's sac, sac, mate! He said he had the win down to a science, pry open the h-file and... sac sac mate.  It's going to be more complicated than that in practice given how Dragon players have incredible memories but white's winning idea is relatively simple and intuitive.  Keep in mind that the d5 square is weak in the Dragon too.

Also don't just look on your side of the board:

I went on to win but it was just a casual training game at 15 minutes per side and I did some silly things in the opening. 

Thank you! I will certainly study this, but I still need to get out there and play some actual games! Thank you once again for kindly taking the time to post this.

Actually f4 is called the Levenfish variation, named after a guy who had the last name "Levenfish."  It's actually not bad if you know the trap.  In the above game black played it correctly wih Nc6, but black can get into trouble after Bg7.

But anyway if you want to learn to play against the Sicilian, I would recommend the book "Modernized:  The Open Sicilian" by IM Zhanibek Amanov and FM Kostya Kavutskiy.  The book is very new and has all of the up to date Sicilian theory; it covers in depth just about any Sicilian variation you can think of from the Najdorf to the Dragon to the O'Kelley to the Grivas Sicilians.  It has been a very helpful book to me so far.

There is nothing wrong with Bg7. It was thought that Nc6 is the correct move for black but computers have shown that there is nothing wrong with Bg7. In your example after e5 black should play Nh5 instead of taking on e5.

For example.

But of course playing Nc6 and then Bg7 is perfectly good as well. Just there is nothing wrong with Bg7.

I did mention that Nh5 was the best, but I've had so many games, including one in a tournament, where my opponent dropped a piece because of inaccurate play.  This is a good variation to play if you are trying to avoid a ton of opening theory such as in the Yugoslav Attack.  Even if black does not fall for any of the traps white's position is playable at the least; there are winning and drawing chances for both sides.

The normal dragon is bad for black

If you want to play the dragon, play the accerlated dragon

Hi Chewbacca

Read the series of articles I wrote on my blog site on the Anti-Sicilian Variation - The Alapin.  Very effective against all types of Sicilian Defenses. Surprisingly so, this "Quiet Variation" is very powerful.  It's all explained in the article.  

http://www.chess.com/blog/Samantha212/playing-against-the-sicilian-with-the-sicilian--alapin

Samantha

Bg7 is playable but messy: