Other typical themes for Black are exchanging White's light-square bishop by. h5 (the Soltis Variation) to defend against White's kingside attack. Typical White strategies are exchanging dark-squared bishops by Be3вЂ“h6, sacrificing material to open the h-file, and exploiting pressure on the a2вЂ“g8 diagonal and the weakness of the d5 square.Д«lack will typically counterattack on the queenside, using the queenside pawns, rooks, and dark squared bishop. White tries to break open the Black kingside and deliver mate down the h-file, while Black seeks counterplay on the queenside with sacrificial attacks. The Yugoslav Attack with 9.Bc4 exemplifies the spirit of the Dragon with race-to-mate pawn storms on opposite sides of the board. Bc4 leads to highly tactical double-edged positions. 0-0-0 leading to more positional play while 9. Qd2 Nc6 and now there are fundamentally two distinct branches with 9. Black cannot play 6.Be3 Ng4? immediately because of 7.Bb5+ either winning a piece after 7.Bd7 as white can play Qxg4 due to the pin on the d7 bishop, or winning an exchange and pawn after 7. Ng4 harassing White's dark-squared bishop. f3 The point of White's last move is to safeguard e4 and to stop Black from playing. The earliest known printed reference, found by chess historian Edward Winter, is in the Jan-Feb 1914 issue of Wiener Schachzeitung. In his 1953 autobiography, the Russian chess master and amateur astronomer Fyodor Dus-Chotimirsky claimed that he coined the name 'Dragon Variation' in 1901, after the fancied resemblance between Black's kingside pawn structure and the constellation Draco.

It was played frequently by Henry Bird that decade, then received general acceptance around 1900 when played by Harry Nelson Pillsbury and other masters. The modern form of the Dragon was originated by German master Louis Paulsen around 1880. The line is considered one of the sharpest of all chess openings. The result is often both sides attacking the other's king with all available resources.

To involve the a1-rook in the attack, White usually castles queenside, placing the white king on the semi-open c-file. In one of the most popular and theoretically important lines, the Yugoslav Variation, White meets Black's setup with Be3, Qd2 and Bh6, exchanging off the Dragon bishop, followed by launching a kingside pawn storm with h4вЂ“h5 and g4. In the Dragon, Black fianchettoes their bishop on g7, castling on the king's side while aiming the bishop at the center and queenside. In chess, the Dragon Variation is one of the main lines of the Sicilian Defence and begins with the moves:ДЎ. Not playing a more main line sicilian also has the disadvantage of not being able to access as much learning material surrounding the opening (which is of course a dual edged sword - your opponent is less likely to be booked up on it too).1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 However it is not much different to playing an opening for the sole purpose of hoping your opponent falls for an opening trap, with a poor position if they don't. So yes, the O'Kelly works out very nicely statistically IF your opponent plays 3.d4, and in many cases at thuglife's level, they will it seems. In general the advantage for starting with the white pieces gets less and less as the rating class goes down, with beginners having almost no statistical advantage for starting with white, so 50/50 for black at this level isn't particularly impressive compared to the same stat at higher levels. This isn't particularly terrible for black, and some very main stream openings give black less than this, but the stronger the players the worse black performs after 3.c3. The problem is that if white DOESN'T play 3.d4, and plays 3.c3 (the most common move for stronger players, and the second most common move for <=1800) then you have this: That's just some food for thought for you. d4 is the most popular move in the U1800 section I looked through. I looked up the stats for you, munich, and I noticed this for the O'Kelly U1800:ДЄnd that's even before White plays 3.

Play the sicilian dragon pdf