THE NEW SICILIAN DRAGON by GM Simon Williams is the first comprehensive examination of the Dragon-Najdorf hybrid the author dubs the Dragadorf. Though played a couple of times by the great world champion Mikhail Botvinnik in the early 1960s, it has only recently caught on and is still in the development stages compared to more well established Sicilian lines.
Williams concentrates primarily on the move order 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.f3 a6. He focuses on all White tries particularly lines where the first player castles long with or without Bc4. He also devotes some type to the Accelerated Dragadorf where Black substitutes 6...Bg7 with 6...a6, the idea being to save a tempo if White plays Bh6 (...Bf8 x h6 and not ...Bf8-g7 x h6).
THE NEW SICILIAN DRAGON provides a complete repertoire for Black using lines independent of both the Najdorf and Dragon. Against Classical approaches with 6.Be2 Williams offers setups with ...Nbd7, ...a6, ...Qc7 and either ...b5 or ...b6. He also offers lines against 6.f4 and 6.g3. The material is presented through 62 model games which feature plenty of analysis and explanatory prose.
This book can be recommended to players from 1800 on up who are looking for a hot but not too spicy nor too heavily analyzed line of the Sicilian.
