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Hi guys!
Thanks for the majority of your comments about last months update and I'm excluding those in the nature of 'What the hell are you doing featuring those joker's games. They may be 2700 plus players and congratulations to them for that. Yes that's all very nice but who really plays those sort of moves in real Dragon games, you know of the bread and butter tournament chess variety. And just what exactly is that 12...a6 all about? Who really plays chess like that and how is that relevant to the Joe Bloggs on the street? Come on Chris, get off your high horse and get back to reality! PS Can we have some more realistic Yugoslav h-file hacks and a few more Levenfishes wouldn't go amiss either!'

Download PGN of October '08 Dragon Sicilian games


Okay so I'm slightly exaggerating! I will continue to monitor the encounters between the world's leading players and will of course supply relevant or specifically requested annotations. I won't however restrict myself to the very highest level encounters as not only is it debatable whether the likes of 12...a6 will ultimately prove theoretically important in the overall scheme of things, but more might be learnt by the majority of our subscribers in terms of Dragon ideas and concepts elsewhere.

That said we kick off this update with...

Nisipeanu - Azarov which is a (very!) main line 9 0-0-0 d5 Yugoslav Attack, and then Svidler - Radjabov which dabbles in 10 Qe1:

but after 10...e5 soon reaches a similar structure.

To coin a Julian Hodgson phrase, the Chinese Dragon gets a bit of a tonking in Negi - Corrales but Black did rather ask for trouble in provoking a thematic Nf5! sacrifice.

Away from the Yugoslav Attack (but only just!) we have Rogic - Feletar which sees a repeat of the 11 g4!? pawn offering in the Classical with long castling line:

that I recently warned that Dragon players need to take seriously.

6 Bc4 was referred to rhetorically as the 'Improved Classical' by Eddy Dearing in his Play the Sicilian Dragon book and in one of its critical lines Bobras - Praszak offers food for thought.

Can White really concede his dark-squared bishop for a black knight and still claim an edge?

Finally the Hyper-Accelerated Dragon encounter Legaspi - Sagar provides plenty of entertainment as Black learns to his cost the dangers of castling kingside without a defensive knight on hand. Well worth playing over!

Jeepers creepers I've just noticed that's 6-0 in favour of White. Still at least now nobody can accuse me of being biased!


Bye for now, Chris

To get in touch with me, either leave a message for me on the Dragons Forum, or email me at Chris Ward@ChessPublishing.com (for subscribers only!)