Regular Sicilian Dragon, Accelerated Dragon, or Hyperaccelerated Dragon?

I'm just wondering which is better for black in the long term, as they are all very similar

Regular. You won't suffer against the Maroczy Bind.

They are different based on what white plays, you can't just play a dragon set up without considering what is on the bord, it is not a system opening against 1.e4.

True. Some lines you can get away with accelerating the move order but if White chooses to not cooperate, it's easy to get out of book and position real fast. I think I can count on one hand each variation I have played and mostly in blitz games. In long games, I either play the Najdorf or some open variants unless White chooses to go with the Alapin, closed or Gran Prix attack.

The Accelerated Dragon is probably the Best!

It is a tough nut to crack and has shown to hold up better vs. the other lines in my opinion!

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The Modern Innovation’s to the Sicilian Dragon have made it more Playable!

However, The YugoSlav Attack continues to be a Thorn in the Sicilian Dragon side!

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The Hyper Accelerated Dragon is very strong, but in most games the line will transpose back into an Accelerated Dragon.

I have played all three.

The regular Dragon is perhaps the easiest to play. Its themes are easily taught to club level players. When I was a beginner, I had a book that recommended the Dragon for newcomers. It is easy for White to attack the Dragon and so newcomers should expect to get smashed a few times. But Black’s counterplay is easy to understand and the counterattacks are fun to play.

The Accelerated and Hyperaccelerated Dragon have move order tricks to avoid the Yugoslav Attack. However, they allow the Maroczy Bind. This is a strong positional line at the advanced level. However, club level players may not understand how to play it.

in the last several months, I have watched Carlsen, Caruana, and Nakamura all play blitz games in which they used the Hyperaccelerated Dragon. So, they must think it is a reasonable choice, at least in a blitz game.

Early in my chess "career" I used to play the Dragon, but I switched to playing the Najdorf with a Scheveningen center because of the weakness of the d5 square in the regular Dragon.

Maybe one of the other two Dragon versions would have worked better for me. Very happy with the Najdorf, though.

najdorf with E5 is goated

Goated. What does that mean?

In my local club, I see a lot of people playing accelerated dragons and so far no one has played the normal dragon against me. There must be a youtuber pushing it. In the 1970's you couldnt swing a dead cat in a tourny without hitting a few dragon players and the accelerated dragon just wasnt played.

I agree with Mike tho that normal dragon should be easiest to learn as the patterns are pretty much set and not subtle. (I only play the dragon myself as transposition when white makes a odd move.)

Bill

its good to play against white https://www.chess.com/game/live/140083815964

I think engines prefer the latter since dragon you commit a pawn move its more flexible but I would run dragon accelerated as second dragon dorf and last is hyper accelerated there is a free chessable course that covers most yugoslav lines as black from mc german he is bad at explaining so you must do your own notes black only has to worry about yugoslav and maybe few moves of levenfish

your opponents at your level will not know theory but if you look at what the chessable does in some areas like a h5 then you would have better game sense and fare better but I would pick a easier opening to play and just grind tactics until you are stronger