The Dragnikov Sicilian

In my first blog for lichess, I wanted to share something that I've been having a lot of success with in my online games. Before we get into the opening itself, I'd like to share the background of how I came up with the concept.

It all started over 10 years ago! I was a teenager that thought it would be cool to have my "own" opening. I was already aware of the "Dragodorf" so named as a hybrid of the Najdorf and Dragon Sicilians. So I looked into combining the Dragon and Sveshnikov, and hence "The Dragnikov" was born!

Unfortunately at the time, I didn't have much confidence in my idea and it never became anything more than a random YouTube video. That was until a GM friend of mine mentioned he tried it himself in some of his own tournament games against 2600 opposition no less, and with decent results!

Surprised, I took my now better analytical skills to look into the "Dragnikov" again to see if I could breathe new fire into the opening...

The Starting Position:

The Most Common Response:

The Refutation:

This is the only move that causes us problems theoretically and I suppose the reason holding the Dragnikov back as a respectful Sicilian Variation. There's no hiding from the fact that with best play, white will end up with a +1 advantage. Fortunately for us, we will be playing humans and not engines, and based on my analysis, I still think we have very good practical chances. The irony is, you are very unlikely to ever face this move as it only has only been played 1% of the time on the lichess database!

Trying to make the Dragnikov playable:

My Favourite Model Game:

Conclusion:

Based on some of the analysis I gave, I think it's fair to say the Dragnikov can be a dangerous addition to any Sicilian players repertoire. If you are not much of a risk taker, you can use it more in faster time controls which is mostly what I've been doing myself. At the end of the day, it's no worse than Sielecki's Dirty Harry Sicilian which did very well on Chessable or even Eric Rosen's idea of the Stafford Gambit, which is completely losing for black, but of course can be very dangerous if white is not prepared for it. It just goes to show, we don't always have to play exactly the way an engine would...

If you have reached the end of this blog, thank you for reading! I hope you will have good results using the Dragnikov yourselves!

If you would like to see my full analysis, along with model games you can purchase my course here