tp2205 wrote on 11/27/11 at 16:42:49:


The Polugaievsky Variation is a complex system in which pawn moves might weaken the kingside. Also you have to know how to play. Most players will choose 6.Bg5 over 6.Be2, 6.f4, etc. etc. Except 6.Be3 wit the idea of playing 7.f3, Qd2 and probably castling queen side then to attack on the kingside. Should we say that this is not chess because there are not positional maneouvres from the very beginning?
Some old guys can remember the Game Sokolov-Ribli from the Montpellier Itz 1985. It started with 6.Be2 and ended with a winning attack for white. Others will remember the same variation of the last game Karpov-Kasparov 1985. Kasparov won. A lot of times people play by fashion. Things change. I don't think that anybody is going to say tat we shouldn't play the Botvinnik System of the Semi-slav because of its "chaotic variations".
I myself have played 1.g3 all of my life. I had too many positional games. The fact that you play a "Chaotic Variation" do not mean that you are not playing chess at all. If it is not chess then what's what it is?
GM Anthony Miles played Carokan, Sicilian Dragon and "English Opening"!!!. You get your own conclusions.

Moderator's note (MNb): again I request to stick to the subject, which is Vigorito's book, or I'll have to split the thread.

MNb wrote on 11/27/11 at 16:18:22:


I do for the most part. In days long past I played the Najdorf and against Bg5 the Polugaevsky variation. I don't remember ever having a real game with it (Be2, Bc4 and to a lesser degree f4 were what I faced most though.) I suspect the Dragon may be similar. Studying/analyzing the Polugaevsky variation was fun, but I cannot recall a real game with it where home preparation did not decide the game.

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I envy you. I have never managed to come to an agreement with myself on what opening to play. 

PANFR wrote on 11/26/11 at 12:29:59:


The Dragon and the Marshall are openings for strictly professional chess players? I didn't know that you had to be professional to play certain openings. This must be a joke. I wonder what kind of rating and chess experience this guy has to state things like that. I myself drew a game against an IM, lost some others and won some others against strong opposition. Hold on as I am not a GM I can not play the Dragon at all or the Marshall. Does anybody agree with this guy's statement? Please answer him.

wow, there are some interesting, and some very naive comments here. some things said remind me of things like 'you cannot play the Caro Kann because it's a draw". I do not know of many players at any level that are memorizing computer printouts.
The series is "Chess Developments". Originally I planned to have a non-Yugoslav chapter, but it became clear that all of the important theoretical trends were in the Yugoslav. Of course there are some games here and there, but nothing tremendously important. I think the older works (Dearing, Ward, Golubev) would provide more than enough information for a tournament player to get by with. The Yugoslav lines are the ones that 'move'.

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I disagree. You don't have to know anything in particular, the nature of the positions is very simple- just follow the latest theoretical line. This is the main problem with the Dragon: This is not chess, just memorizing chaotic variations.

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I disagree again. If you have devoted so much time memorizing Yugoslav variations, you should have lost your positional feeling, and you will likely get the worst out of a "normal" position rather easily. 

The Dragon and the Marshall are strictly openings for professional chessplayers. Once upon a time they were fun, entertaining, challenging, whatever. In their current status, they are the kind of chess I despise: Not logical, not irrational, not intuitive, not anything. Just long sheets of computer-approved moves. I'm very sorry, but this is not chess.
The Dragon against a weaker opponent is clearly a bad choice: He will pick a forced draw variation. It is also a bad choice against a pro, because he would have analyzed a bit more than you.
Same goes for the Marshall. OK, Aronian does play the Marshall to draw and the Berlin to win, Carlsen does play the Dragon when he doesn't mind splitting the point, but none of us here are in that league.

PANFR wrote on 11/25/11 at 13:56:47:


Well, I have 25 years of experience with the Dragon. Whether I played over the board, correspondence, on the white side and especially as black. Much more challenging, and critical is the Yugoslav Attack (I believe they call it like that: 6.Be3 Bg7 7.f3 followed by Qd2, and typically 0-0-0). It doesn't mean that you can't choose other systems. But black has been refuted, revived, refuted and revived so many times, that makes it hard to handle the black pieces against the Yugoslav Attack. And you really have to know well what you are playing. Otherwise you don't adopt it. It takes a lot of investigation, and hard work to demonstrate that what you are playing is correct.
In other systems against the Dragon, you don't have to play necessarily perfect to equalize a position or earn a draw. Let's just wait and see that book, and how things go in the future.

White has host of options against openings like Dragon and Najdorf. Howerver there are  only about two or three none yuguslav attack lines where plays a h4-h5 plan. There are systems based on getting play at f file, systems about getting a knight to d5 and systems based about crashing though the centre and some yugoslav attack like lines.

Opening is about give and take, black gets a strong Bishop at g7 in return for the d5 square. There also lots other sicilians where white gets the d5 square and a top of that black sometiems also gets a backward pawn at d6.

In these days black has more winning chanses against none yugoslav attack  lines than in yugoslav  attack, especeilly in 9 0-0-0 line. In 9 Bc4 yugoslavs white can force a draw in many lines as well.

EDIT started to write this post before MNbs post appeared. 

Still I believe that there are MANY challenging lines which have to be dealt by the Dragon player. For example the simple system with 0-0, Re1 and Bb3 is scoring massively at the GM level. Black needs to apply great care to equalize, and his winning chances are significantly lower compared to the Yugoslav. And this is not the only variation that challenges Black, which is quite natural: Black has made an active, but positionally commital setup: One thing to worry about is the h4-h5 kingside assault, and another one is the d5 square, which is firmly under white's control.