A Brief History of the Sicilian Dragon

This post is by no means a comprehensive account of the colorful history of this variation but I have chosen some illustrative games to describe some of the main themes, especially in the exciting Yugoslav attack with opposite sides castling.

The first game I selected was played between Boleslavsky and Geller in the famous 1953 Candidates Tournament. Here white plays an early g3, which normally ends up as a fairly positional game but the players almost seem to accidentally end up in a Yugoslav attack-like position, well before the theory of this line was fully developed:

I find it interesting that this game featured the thematic exchange sacrifice Rxc3, which is almost always a good idea for black in the Yugoslav.

The next game I selected is from a training match played between Karpov and Kortchnoi in 1971, a few years before their first serious match in the 1974 Candidates Tournament.

In this game, Kortchnoi should almost certainly have gone for Rxc3 and was very fortunate to win regardless.

Three years later Kortchnoi unleashed the Dragon in the second game of the aforementioned Candidates Tournament but this time Karpov was well prepared:

Still, Kortchnoi had his chances as the prophylactic move Kb1 was not yet part of mainline theory and he could have used this to his advantage.

A few decades later the theory of the Dragon had taken large strides and it was already considered somewhat dubious for black. For this reason it was a big surprise when none other than Garry Kasparov played it against Viswanathan Anand in the 1995 Classical World Championship!

Anand went for the usual h4 push when in fact it was quite easily stopped by h5. In retrospect the prophylactic Kb1 followed by g4 would have been the better choice as Kasparov ended up with all the initiative.

Buoyed by his success, Kasparov played the Dragon again in his next black game and won again:

This time leaving the king in the center proved fatal for Anand.

There are of course countless other examples I could choose from but these games are among the most significant occasions that the Dragon has been used at the highest level. If you have an interesting Dragon game you’d like to share feel free to post it in the forum!

I hope you enjoyed this post,

Dan