14. Kb1 is arguably the best move there for White, but Black can play 14...Re8 and carry on improving his position slowly; I think that line is fine for Black. After the exchange on b3 in the line you give, White is going to blow you away in the centre with a well-timed e5 or Nd5 both giving him an edge; it is difficult for Black to play actively.

As for your second line, what position are you starting from at move 15? Can you give the previous 2 or 3 moves?

Adam

The specific problem is that White can play 14. Qe2, where the knight is doing very little on c4 - without the attack on the bishop, it's not nearly so useful. ...Rc5 is often a useful move in the Dragon, covering several important squares on the 5th rank (...Qa5, ...b5, Nd5, e5, and f5 are all thematic moves), and it asks White what his plan is. Eddie explains it well in his book - better than I have here - but it is essentially copying White's plan of gradually improving his position before committing to an attack.

Adam

e2e4 wrote on 03/11/06 at 19:54:50:


Yes, pretty much - I think that in the game I was thinking of (and that looks like the reference I was after - thanks), White allowed this and suffered in the ending; after ...b6 the knight is very restricted and his pawns are weak and immobile. After c3 Black has a clear target to aim his pawns at in some sort of minority attack, as well as being able to swing his rooks to the queenside (and Rc1 instead as a defensive idea allows ...b6, with ...a5-a4 to hit the knight, and ...b5-b4 - quite apart from being able to take the d-file in some lines). Just as importantly, White has no play! There are also some ideas where White goes Na1 instead and tries to make it harder for Black to attack by avoiding the creation of a clear target the way the c3-pawn was; this is actually quite solid, but it's again hard to generate play. I'm not keen on giving away my analysis at the moment, both because there's a fair bit of it, and because I'm not certain it's correct yet, but if you play around with the position for a while, you should find ideas for Black.

Adam

Also in Rogozenko's 21.Rdf1 why not simly 21..Re8 ? White has left the pressure on the d6 pawn?

I would look hard at 20...Be6!?; it's a pawn sacrifice that has been giving me some pretty decent results in friendly games and analysis, though I haven't tried it out OTB in a tournament yet. The idea is to double rooks and roll the queenside pawns, using the active pieces and pawn structure (White's pawn breaks are hard to engineer without leaving serious weaknesses, and Black has a minority attack if White tries to defend with c3) to provide long-term pressure; as long as the b-pawn hasn't gone to b5 swapping the rooks for the queen and c-pawn is reasonable, as the pawns on e5 and b6, along with the bishop, restrict the White knight sufficiently to provide enough compensation. This also gives you a good and less theoretical line against 19. Nb3, as 19...Be6!? 20. Nxf6 Qxf6 transposes. There's a game in the NIC database in this line, but I can't remember off the top of my head who played it.

Adam