The main line of the Dragon continues:
6. Be3 Bg7 7. f3 :The point of White's last move is to safeguard e4 and to stop Black from playing ...Ng4 harassing White's dark-squared bishop. Black cannot play 6.Be3 Ng4?? immediately because of 7.Bb5+ either winning a piece after 7...Bd7 as white can play Qxg4 due to the pin on the d7 bishop, or winning an exchange and pawn after 7...Nc6 8.Nxc6 bxc6 9.Bxc6+ forking king and rook.
7... 0-0 8. Qd2 Nc6 :and now there are fundamentally two distinct branches with 9.0-0-0 leading to more positional play, while 9.Bc4 leads to highly tactical double-edged positions. The Yugoslav Attack with 9.Bc4 exemplifies the spirit of the Dragon with race-to-mate
pawn storms on opposite sides of the board. White tries to break open the Black kingside and deliver mate down the h-file, while Black seeks counterplay on the queenside with sacrificial attacks. Typical White strategies are exchanging dark-squared bishops by Be3–h6, sacrificing material to open the h-file, and exploiting pressure on the a2–g8 diagonal and the weakness of the d5 square. Black will typically counterattack on the queenside, using the queenside pawns, rooks, and dark squared bishop. Black sometimes plays ...h5 (the Soltis Variation) to defend against White's kingside attack. Other typical themes for Black are
exchanging White's light-squared bishop by ...Nc6–e5–c4, pressure on the c-file, sacrificing the exchange on c3, advancing the b-pawn and pressure on the long diagonal. Black will generally omit ...a6 because White will generally win in a straight pawn attack since Black has given White a hook on g6 to attack. In general, White will avoid moving the pawns on a2/b2/c2, and so Black's pawn storm will nearly always be slower than White's on the kingside. Black can frequently obtain an acceptable endgame even after sacrificing the exchange because of White's h-pawn sacrifice and doubled pawns.
The positional line with 9.0-0-0 After years of players believing that White's best play and chance for advantage lay in the main line with 9. Bc4, this older main line made a major comeback. White omits Bc4 in order to speed up the attack. It used to be thought that allowing 9...d5 here allows Black to equalize easily but further analysis and play have proven that things are not so clear cut. In fact, recently Black experienced a time of difficulty in the 9...d5 line facing a brilliant idea by
Ivanchuk which seemed to give White the advantage. Some Black players began experimenting with 9...Bd7 and 9...Nxd4. A brilliancy found for White one day is soon enough overturned by some new resource for Black. A case in point is the following line where the evaluation of a major line was turned upside down overnight because of a queen sacrifice - Golubev credits "J. Diaz" and himself with discovering it independently in 1996: 9.0-0-0 d5!? 10.Kb1!? Nxd4 11.e5! Nf5! 12.exf6 Bxf6 13.Nxd5 Qxd5! 14.Qxd5 Nxe3 15.Qd3 Nxd1 16.Qxd1 Be6!, where Black has almost sufficient compensation for the queen. Instead of 10. Kb1!?, the main line continues 10. exd5 Nxd5 11. Nxc6 bxc6. While the pawn on d5 appears to be hanging, the seemingly obvious 12. Nxd5? runs into 12...cxd5 13. Qxd5 Qc7! when 14. Qxa8 Bf5 15. Qxf8+ Kxf8 leaves Black with a pair of very potent bishops which, together with the queen on c7, will cause trouble for the White king. Better (and the main line) is 12. Bd4 e5 13. Bc5 Be6!! Capturing the exchange after 14. Bxf8? relinquishes too much control of the dark squares after 14...Qxf8. Instead, the theory continues 14. Ne4 Re8 with a complex positional battle ahead.
Yugoslav Attack with 9.Bc4 The purpose of 9.Bc4 is to prevent Black from playing the freeing move ...d6–d5. The variations resulting from this move are notorious for having been heavily analysed. In addition to covering d5, White's light-squared bishop helps cover White's queenside and controls the a2–g8 diagonal leading to Black's king. However, the bishop is exposed on c4 to an attack by a rook on c8, and usually has to retreat to b3, giving more time for Black to organize an attack. Common in this line is an exchange sacrifice on c3 by Black to break up White's queenside pawns, and sacrifices to open up the long diagonal for Black's bishop on g7 are also common. An example of both ideas is the line 9.Bc4 Bd7 10.0-0-0 Rc8 11.Bb3 Ne5 12.h4 Nc4 13.Bxc4 Rxc4 14.h5 Nxh5 15.g4 Nf6 16.Bh6 Nxe4! 17.Qe3 Rxc3!. The
Soltis Variation was the main line of the Dragon up until the late 1990s. Garry Kasparov played the move three times in the
1995 World Championship against Viswanathan Anand, scoring two wins and a draw. The line goes 9.Bc4 Bd7 10.0-0-0 Rc8 11.Bb3 Ne5 12.h4 h5 (the key move, holding up White's kingside pawn advance). Other important deviations for Black are 12...Qa5 and 12...Nc4. More recently, White players have often avoided the Soltis by playing 12.Kb1, which has proven so effective that Black players have in turn tried to dodge this with 10...Rb8, known as the Chinese Dragon. ==Classical Variation: 6.Be2 ==