LogFAQs > #947729213

pyresword posted...

Although actually, my recollection is that the Dragon and the Hyper Accelerated Dragon were fine, but that the Accelerated Dragon was borderline unplayable. Not to the point that it likely matters against low to mid level opposition but yeah.

For anyone else, yes these are 3 different openings for the record. >.> The "accelerated" and "hyper-accelerated" terms basically refer to how early in the game black chooses to make a particular pawn move that defines this opening.

Edit again: Okay actually I think I'm confused here. The variation I'm thinking of which I think is considered bad is 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 g6. However, it looks like the version where black plays Nc6 instead of d6 is ALSO called the Accelerated Dragon and has been played a lot more frequently. (Presumably with the idea that black intends d5 in which case d6 would have been a wasted move) Chess openings are confusing.

My knowledge of opening theory is relatively weak, so I'm out of my opening theory pretty quickly most games, but yeah, I do play 3. Nc6 typically. A lot of times my games will go something like this:

1. e4 c5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. d4 cxd4
4. Nxd4 g6
5. Nc3 Bg7
6. Be3 d6
7. Bb5 Bd7
8. O-O Nf6
9. f4 O-O

(sometimes I play a6 on move 7 instead of Bd7 and the position will look different, but overall these two problems still happen for me)

So at that point, I really start to struggle with two problems in this position:

How do I stop the white f-pawn from opening up my kingside?
And where is my Queen supposed to go? So often I want to put the Queen on b6 but that's such a horrible square with white's dark-square bishop always on that diagonal, but I can never figure out how to make my queen useful in this line at all, or at least until a bunch of pieces are traded off.

So to avoid these problems I've adopted my defense against the Grand Prix as my normal Sicilian defense.

1. e4 c5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. d4 cxd4
4. Nxd4 e6

And then I play for d5 and castle kingside, and that's been working a lot better for me. It's probably fundamentally less sound, but it plays to my strengths better, I think.


---

The Artist Formerly Known as Hannyabal