Sicilian Defense: Dragon Variation

About this variation

Black fianchettoes the bishop on g7, aiming it down the long diagonal. Against the Yugoslav Attack the game often becomes a race between attacks on opposite wings.

The Dragon comes from 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6. Black puts the bishop on g7, where it bears down the long diagonal towards d4, c3 and eventually White's queenside king. The name is usually credited to Fyodor Dus-Chotimirsky, who in 1901 saw the constellation Draco in Black's pawn chain on d6, e7, f7, g6 and h7.

White's most dangerous answer is the Yugoslav Attack: Be3, f3, Qd2, castling queenside and then a pawn storm with h4-h5 and g4 to open the h-file. The plan is simple to remember: trade Black's strong bishop with Bh6 and deliver mate down the h-file. Calmer systems with Be2 and short castling exist, but they give Black an easy game with ...Nc6, ...O-O and play on the c-file.

Black's counterplay is just as direct. The rook comes to c8, the knight jumps to c4 or e5, and the exchange sacrifice ...Rxc3 to smash the pawns in front of White's king is so common that it is almost a standard move. The race is often decided by a single tempo, so in the Yugoslav Attack Black must know the critical lines, such as the Soltis Variation with ...h5 to slow White's pawns.

The Dragon suits players who enjoy concrete, double-edged positions and are willing to memorize a fair amount of theory. It is a superb training opening for calculation, and its ideas carry over to the Accelerated Dragon and other ...g6 Sicilians.

A useful way to learn the Dragon is to study model games from both sides of the Yugoslav Attack. The same patterns come back again and again: the exchange sacrifice on c3, the knight jump to c4 to trade White's bishop, and White's h-file breakthrough. Once those patterns are familiar, many of the forcing lines become much easier to remember.

It is one of the main lines of the Sicilian Defense.