This week at the Spice cup in Texas, where Wesley So is doing so-so in third place with 5/9, he managed to put out the fire in Ray Robson’s dragon in the following game, with 9.0-0-0 in the Yugoslav attack. Robson is a young GM from Largo, Florida, not too far from my home town actually. The following game illustrates why 9.0-0-0 is a fashionable response to avoid the insanity that sometimes follows from 9.Bc4. By steering the game into more quiet waters, white is able to tame the dragon and sometimes hold a lasting advantage, as in the following game.
Category: Yugoslav Attack
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In the Sicilian Yugoslav attack where white plays the sharp 9.Bc4 (instead of 9.0-0-0), by far the most popular move is 10.Rc8. However, black does have a few reasonable alternatives such as 10…Qa5 and 10…Rb8. The later is called the Chinese Dragon, and has been gaining in popularity in the last decade. The dragon is notorious for its deep forcing continuations, often involving the exchange sac on c3, and the necessity for learning absurd amounts of opening theory in order to survive white’s kingside onslaught.
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