An opening course for Black (ECO B35)
The Accelerated Dragon is the Dragon with the d-pawn left at home: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6, and only then, if the position asks for it, ...d6. That one saved tempo is the whole opening. It means ...d5 can come in a single move instead of two, and the Yugoslav Attack, the pawn storm that makes the ordinary Dragon a memory test, simply does not work against it. The bill arrives immediately in the form of 5.c4, the Maroczy Bind, where White takes d5 away permanently and squeezes. That is the main line of this course and most of its length, because the Bind is not a refutation but it is a real strategic problem, and the games are decided by whether Black knows the freeing plan or just shuffles. The rest of the course covers the sharp Bc4 lines, where the tactics start on move seven, and the exchange tries that go for a structural edge instead.
This course is part of your daily work.
In the normal Dragon, Black plays ...d6 and then needs a second move to get in ...d5. Here the pawn goes to d5 in one go. Against every setup where White plays f3 and Qd2 and starts pushing on the kingside, ...d5 arrives before the storm does and the position opens while White's king is still deciding where to live.
Golombek wrote in 1947 that 5.c4 almost refuted the whole idea and that Black had to grovel. Evans walked that back in Modern Chess Openings in 1965: the position is sound, White has more space. Nunn and Gallagher later landed in between, calling it slightly passive but pointing at Larsen and Velimirovic winning from the black side. That range of opinion is the honest picture, and it is why the Bind chapter is about a plan rather than a move list.
The standard freeing sequence in the Bind is ...Nxd4 first, because trading pieces is how a cramped side breathes, and then ...a5 to stop White's queenside expansion, the light-squared bishop out, the rooks to c8. Only once all of that is done do the breaks ...b5 and ...f5 mean anything. Play them early and they just lose a pawn.
The bishop on c4 and later b3 is the piece that stops ...d5, and the natural way to hit it is ...Na5. That move is the reason this opening has a famous trap named after it. The queen sortie ...Qa5 is the modern answer instead: it pins the c3 knight and hits e4, and three different careless White replies lose material on the spot.
Learning order, one scoresheet per chapter. The coach serves review one line a day; enter any line directly when you want it now.
One line, and it shows you what you are buying. Play it through once and the rest of the course is about the ways White tries to stop this from happening.
The Yugoslav Attack is why most people are scared of the Dragon: f3, Qd2, castle long, then h4-h5 and the position is a race you have to know by heart. Against this move order it does not work, and it is worth seeing exactly why.
5.c4 is the real test, and it is a positional one. White puts pawns on c4 and e4, d5 is off the table for the rest of the game, and Black has less space in a position with no immediate weaknesses to attack. This is not a line you survive by memorising twelve moves. It is a plan, and the plan is: trade a pair of knights, stop the queenside expansion, get the pieces to their squares, and only then break.
The other way to stop ...d5 is with a piece. 7.Bc4 is the sharpest line in the opening and the one with the tactics: the bishop covers d5 a third time and points at f7, and Black has to decide immediately between the modern ...Qa5 and the older ...O-O. Three careless White replies to ...Qa5 lose material at once, and one careless Black reply to the other loses the game.
Two lines where White gives up the centralised knight early to damage Black's structure. Neither is dangerous if you know the follow-up, and one of them contains the biggest correction in this course.
Club games that started in the Accelerated Dragon produced these tactics, and you solve every one from Black's side, the seat you actually sit in. Difficulty follows your solving, the same as the puzzle room.