About Rb8 line h4 line, are there something wrong with 11 .. e5 12 Nxc6 bxc6 13 exd5 Nxd5 14 Nxe5 cxd5 15 Qxd5 Qf6? If white makes any mistkae both Bf5 and Be6 can create nasty threats and pawn to e4 is always in the air.

If think whites best is probely 16 Bg5 Qb6 17 b3 e4 18 Qd6 exf3 19 Qxb6 axb6 20 gxf3 Bb7 geives black some compensation. However not shure if black has enough compensation.

Thx, I haven't read your post carefully enough. I knew the game where White had played 14.Bc4 instead of 14.Nxd5 and lost. I thought 13.ed  Nxd5 14. Nxd5 cd  15. Qxd5 Qc7 gives Black compensation as in he other mainline but looks like you are right and Black has hard to fight for a draw here.

Black has got a rook to b8, meaning it is on an open file and no Qxa8 variations exists (, even throght they are good for black). However the drawback is that the Bishop at g7 is hitting his own e5 pawn. If black somehow could manage to activate the queen to a better sqaure are perhaps manage to advance the epawn he we have compensation. However busy at work right now and hes not got any board to give any exakt variation with compensation for black, we will have to wait and see,

keerik wrote on 03/21/11 at 18:23:53:


Ok, so let's say White goes 12.Nxc6 bxc6 13.exd5 cxd5 14.Nxd5, how should Black continue or is there a better deviation earlier?  At this point 14...Be6 looks the most interesting to me.

keerik wrote on 03/21/11 at 07:04:10:


Except he doesn't recommend the best move for White either.  After 10...Rb8 the move 11.h4! is stronger than 11.g4.  What does Black do then?

I can add that white position in exf6 lien I gave is much easier to defend as well, either by pawn to c4 (after b4) or pawn to a4 depening on how black advances pawns or not.

However, I am not shure if I will play the Dragon next season, I still have good stats with it in every line but I have almost played 2200 dragon games now and dont have time to maintain everything do to work. However, the study of Dragon has increase my geneal chess understanding of everything from material imbalances, play for pawn or exchange, when to enter endgames, attack and defence etc. I have not decided what to play instead, I am thinking about e6 sicilian systems since I find Bb5(+) variations to boring and like to play sicilian positions as both black and white, it will be a matter of thinking on the summer if I have time to switch defence or not.

Glenn Snow wrote on 03/18/11 at 09:20:24:


Yes, but even if I studied it for a hundred hours and couldn't find an answer for Black I would know there was one and it hasn't been refuted. Maybe you could call something "weakly refuted", but Black is not clearly worse.

No bother. 

The score given by Houdini doesn't reflect how hard Black will have to work for the next ten moves to maintain equality. If Black has to defend extremely precisely for the next hour and a half with only drawing chances and with little attacking opportunities, but gets to a tablebase-puzzle style ending to force a draw, then that position can be correctly shown as "level" by the computer. The computer doesn't say how accurately one side will have to play to reach its conclusion (if a computer could solve chess it would have something like +300.00 immediately for White).     
   
However the Dragon gives a lot of dangerous chances for Black also and is still in really good shape, it's at least playable at the Super GM level (unlike perhaps KG for example). No refutation or clear advantage is known, and that's after thousands of hours of human and computer analysis.  
   
Similar things are true of the Scheveningen (although the Scheveningen is held in a bit higher regard at the elite level). But I just find it a bit pretentious for an average club player to be critical of openings like that, if they got bust by a pawn storm it was because they didn't understand how to defend it properly.... NOT because of advances and preferences in opening theory at the GM level. And they will have roughly the same chances whether their opponent plays the Dragon or Najdorf. Super GMs are playing and preparing at a completely different level to the average player or anyone sub-IM.