Heralding in the year of the Dragon

The year 2024 is deemed the Year of the Dragon (according to people of Chinese origins) and so I thought it's timely to show more Hungarian Dragon activities to herald in the new Dragon year.   Moreover, I got in a very thematic HD tactic in a recent Titled Tuesday event against a 2500 IM.

Ironically, in the same event,  in round 7, he ran into the real Hungarian Dragon expert GM Nikita Matinian whose games are heavily quoted all over my book) and he got burned again spectacularly.

Ever since my book was published ( https://forwardchess.com/product/the-hungarian-dragon ), Dragon experts have taken to calling the variation the Hungarian Dragon indeed. I would like to highly recommend 3 FREE works by top class analysts  so that readers can benefit more from learning this exciting line.

Firstly, GM Chris Ward the Dragon doyen, who has a Chessbase Monthly Dragon Youtube series and he showed the ideas in the HD in the following video. A lot of analysis and reference material for my book is gathered from Chris' Chesspublishing.com Dragon Sicilian page so he definitely knows what he is talking about.

Next up, my buddy the Butcher from Serbia,  the popular chess streamer IM Miodrag Perunovic. He doesn't look like it but his day job is in the legal department for the government judiciary(!) and when he isn't dreaming up new creative ideas on how to hack opponents to stream for his fans, he captains the Serbian Olympiad team.

Here's his take on the Hungarian Dragon.

OK, I've saved this for the last because it's pretty advanced. GM Matthew Sadler is famous for combining top notch computer engine analysis and high level GM interpretation of the ideas with detailed and easy-to-understand explanation. In his video, he not only shows the main lines (after Be3 Nc6 f3 h5) but also gives (appropropriately) Dragon 3.3 engine lines on how to circumvent the main line (before Black can play ...h5). This, in my opinion, is extremely important because a key skill in tournament chess today is to get into positions where your opponent has to think for himself/herself without 'automatic' moves or thematic ideas which were prepared in advance.

What's even better is you can get the whole analysis FOC from his youtube page!

I would also like to thank FM Dr James Vigus for that very nice book review   on the book.

A very Happy Hacking Dragon New Year to all!