The Hungarian Dragon
This blogpost is copied from my article in the September 2022 issue of CHESS (UK) magazine with the permission of its editor IM Richard Palliser (thanks so much!). It's mainly a plug for my new book, The Hungarian Dragon (Carstenchess, 2022) which I have written and it is published by FM Carsten Hansen who seems to have a hand in anything chess-related (columnist for Chess Life and Chess.com, prolific author, publisher, trainer and whatever else).
The Hungarian Dragon
Brandon Clarke has been making good use of a new Sicilian line, as Junior Tay explains.
Say goodbye to the Yugoslav Attack and hello to the Hungarian Dragon!
I am pleased to inform readers that I have just written a new opening book called The Hungarian Dragon (CarstenChess 2022), on an interesting line that circumvents White’s typical Yugoslav Attack in the Sicilian Dragon by making White bypass the standard tabiya moves. The line that I analyzed goes 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 g6 6 Be3 Nc6 f3 h5!?.
At first glance, it looks like just a punt to confuse White, by rendering the standard Bh6 or g2-g4, h2-h4-h5 charges harder to attain. However, there are some finer points to the ‘Hungarian Harry punt’. As for why I named this line the Hungarian Dragon, top Hungarian GM Richard Rapport’s use of the variation in the World Blitz 2021 in two games brought it to my attention (yes, I know the joke’s on me now that he has moved to represent the Romanian Chess Federation). I notice that the disorientation brought on by the Hungarian Dragon’s strange-looking moves is very evident, especially in online games where White frequently pauses after long castling, not sure of how to respond to Black’s queenside attack, given that the normal h4-h5 or g2-g4, Be3-h6 ideas are no longer available. The following example is pretty typical in online games.
Chapter 3 of my book demonstrates how the h-pawn punt all the way down to h3 weakens the h1-a8 diagonal considerably (after White plays g2-g3 in response), and how Black gets to put the diagonal to good use.
The king’s rook can get access to active play via the h5-square if necessary. A GM friend whom I discussed the line with won three online games in a row with the Hungarian Dragon. This is his second game with it, utilizing the rook lift idea with deadly effect.
The h-pawn wedge can also confer an endgame edge for Black. Let me use a recent game from IM Brandon Clarke’s tournament victory in the Hamburg IM invitational to illustrate how the h-pawn can be an absolute nuisance in the endgame for White.
I must thank the prolific and experienced author/publisher FM Carsten Hansen who started off giving me many tips on how to publish on the Amazon platform (without asking for anything in return), and ended up becoming my editor and publisher for this work. I hope you like the book cover too! All I wanted was a Dragon there and the colors are based on the Hungarian flag (green, red and white), which was Carsten’s idea. Also, many thanks to your editor, IM Richard Palliser, who has constantly allowed my opening articles to be published – part of the theory for this work is based on a July 2018 article in CHESS (‘Harry the h-pawn’s Positional Justification’) – as well as to GM Chris Ward and GM Gawain Jones for their coverage of the Hungarian Dragon on Chesspublishing.com.
Ed. – The Hungarian Dragon is available in a multitude of ebook formats and especially in printed version from Chess & Bridge, retailing at £16.99 or £15.29 for Subscribers.
Author's note: You can check out the kindle (and paperback) versions at Amazon.
Please note that Britain's best selling chess magazine, CHESS can be purchased via https://chess.co.uk/collections/chess-magazine
