Yes , this thread is really warming up now!

This is right on the money for me!

The Petroff! A great line to milk higher rated players for a draw, it avoids the lopez, and some other sidelines. Plus, it is quite easy for white to over-press and lose, especially in the lines where he takes on positional weaknesses. A great line well you just are not up for the Najdorf.

More bad (i.e., too general and simplistic) advice.

You make it sound so easy. But drawing with the Petroff is NOT easy. I'll give four examples.

First, the beginner. He has problems with tactics, and that means that defending is especially hard for him, even when up on material.

Case in point: the Cochrane Gambit. IM Gary Lane covers this instructively in one of his Opening Lanes columns. Check the ChessCafe archives for "Ten Things I Hate About Chess" in which Lane responds to a question from David Dathe (USA), who wrote,

"I hate playing white against the Petroff...Black seems to get either a symmetrical pawn structure, lots of piece trades, or consolidates and prevents White from attacking. As a natural attacking player, in the style of, but clearly not in the same league as, Mikhail Tal, do you have a good attacking line for White that can lead to open, tactical positions?"

Lane responds: "I can think of an amusing line in the Petroff that is likely to scare the average player and has attracted the attention of top players such as former world title contender Nigel Short:"--

and then he gives the game Sarunas Sulskis-Mikhail Rytshagov, Keres Memorial (Rapid), Tallinn 2004,

where Black got his draw, but not before suffering a fierce attack. After 11 Bf4, Lane notes that "The king on d7 looks somewhat misplaced and I suspect the average player would find it distressing to try and defend. In this case Rytshagov, rated 2465, cannot hang on to the extra piece and must merely fend off the onslaught."

Now most online chess games are played at a blitz or rapid time control and a great many online players will attempt to hang onto the material as the surest road to victory. How many rated far below a 2465 player will know enough to give back the extra material in order to secure the draw? How many, knowing they SHOULD give back the booty, will know WHEN?

For the record, the moves went: 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 Nxe5 d6 4 Nxf7 Kxf7 5 d4 c5 6 Bc4+ Be6 7 Bxe6+ Kxe6 8 Nc3 cxd4 9 Qxd4 Nc6 10 Qc4+ Kd7 11 Bf4 Qa5 12 0-0-0 Re8 13 Kb1 Kc8 14 Bxd6 Bxd6 15 Rxd6 Qe5 16 Rhd1 Nxe4 17 Rxc6+! bxc6 18 Qxc6+ Qc7 draw

The next game is one of my quick Pogo crushes. The opponent is not up to the defense, either:

1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 Nxe5 Nxe4? 4 Qe2 d6 5 Nxf7 Kxf7 6 Qxe4 Qf6 7 Bc4+ Be6 8 Bxe6+ (8 Qxb7? leads only to equality.) 8...Qxe6 9 Qxe6+ Kxe6 10 0-0 Kd7 11 d4 Nc6 12 c3 g6 13 Nd2 Bg7 14 Nf3 Rhe8 15 Be3 h5? (15...Ne7 is better) 16 Rfe1 Bf6 17 Bg5 Rxe1+ 18 Rxe1 Bxg5 19 Nxg5 Re8 20 Rxe8 Kxe8 21 Ne6
1-0

Moving on to the stratospheric, there are two high-level clashes to look at:

J.Polgar-Karpov, Essent Hoogeveen NED, 2003, shows the importance of fundamental combinational attacks--in this case, the double bishop sacrifice (which first occurred in a game played by John Owen in Liverpool before Lasker-Bauer, Amsterdam 1889):

4rrk1/p1pb1ppp/1p6/n1qPB3/8/2PBR3/5PPP/3QR1K1

Karpov, one of the greatest players of all time, has just played 24...Qc5??, and now his opponent has a mate (work it out for some good practice, but don't touch the pieces!!).

Like I said, knowing the fundamentals is worth more than opening knowledge that changes all the time.

Finally, there is Hydra-Adams, Game One. Adams, one of the world's great players, was wiped out.

After 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 Nxe5 d6 4 Nf3 Nxe4 5 d4 d5 6 Bd3 Nc6 7 0-0 Be7 8 Re1 Bg4 9 c3 f5 10 Qb3 0-0 11 Nbd2 Na5 12 Qc2 Nc6 13 b4 a6 14 Rb1 Bd6 15 h3 Bh5 16 b5 Na5 17 c4 dxc4 18 Nxc4 Nxc4 19 Bxc4+ Kh8 20 bxa6 bxa6, Hydra might have missed a slight advantage by not playing 21 Rb3, but with 21 Ne5 c5 22 Bd5 Rc8 23 Be6, the pressure kept building, and Adams was not equal to it, playing 23...Rc7? and going on to lose in 33 moves.

Make no mistake: the Petroff is NOT the simple solution to opening problems. It's a tough go even trying for a draw. There is a bunch of theory on it, and as opponents get stronger, they'll know--and use--more and more of that theory. Like any other opening, mastering it to the level of just basic playability will take hundreds of hours--which means years.

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"Explaining metaphysics to the nation,
I wish he would explain his Explanation."

--Byron, Don Juan

Of course, if you don't want to do any work, it does not matter what you play. I pray for the cochrane when I play the petroff, whether I want a draw or not. I like being up a piece when white has insufficient comp. I have faith in my powers, and I will do my best to realize my decisive edge. It is absolutely insane to eschew the petroff because you're afraid some higher rated player is going to giving you a sharp game with the marginal Cochrane gambit.

Your pogo game is not worthy of space on this board. 3...Nxe4?, end of discussion. The fact that you can beat a bunch of sub 1200 hundred elo strength players does absolutely nothing to strengthen your argument.

Once again, you miss the point.

I never said the Petroff wasn't a damn good opening. I've played it occasionally myself, and always done well with it. I simply said that it wasn't the easy solution you made it out to be when you started off with something like, Yeah, it's great to milk higher-rated players, etc, etc.

I gave some games and positions, a couple with simple lines, and then two, as I put it, in the stratosphere, i.e., very high-level. I regret that I didn't have more time to include some games illustrative of more middle level play, where the players aren't weak beginners, but they aren't IMs or GMs either. The two games showing simple lines are important for giving a beginner something to work with, as a very basic start. The two vastly higher level games show that even players at that level use fairly simple strategies against the Petroff--for example, using c4 to undermine the d5-pawn which guards the knight on e4, etc.

About my "Pogo game": it's a plausible game, worthy of study--IF you're a beginner and don't know WHY 3...Nxe4 is a blunder. A beginner may know THAT it's a blunder, but knowing how to exploit it properly is something else. You and I take a lot for granted, but beginners don't--or if they do, they shouldn't, since they haven't built up enough experience to know when to use theory and when to improvise on it. If you mean that you think that game is representative of my standard of online opponents, then you're either ignorant or deliberately insulting me, since I've posted numerous games on the boards which are against strong opponents, including some experts. Then, too, it's well-known that I'm writing a book, and not surprisingly, you don't see any games of mine against really strong experts or masters, since I'm saving those for the book; I mean, why would I want to post (=publish, in some senses of the word) those games for free? Maybe you're the kind of guy who's so generous he'd go to the trouble of writing a book and then post the best parts of it for free?

It sounds to me like we got off to a bad start in the Politics thread, since I think before that we never interacted on the boards.

Since you won't cite any variations, it's clear to me that all your recent posts to me are about attacking me, and not about my chess arguments. If you keep doing the straw man thing on me, that is, putting weak arguments in my mouth, you're going to find yourself getting nowhere, because I'll simply point to where I didn't, in fact, post what you said I did, and that will always end the dispute in my favor. If you're going to take up the torch ignominiously dropped in the dirt by Matt and RB, you're welcome to it. Being rude and abusive to me via posts heavy on rant and short on substance will just be a waste of your time.

To hear you tell it, I'm nonsense to the core. Great, you assert, and I defend, and there's always at least the theoretical possibility that you're right about something. But remember, the more you say that I "spout" and "spew" what you call "drivel", the more other ninjas begin to wonder, "Hey, if this Combo_Kid ain't shit, then why is MrF spending so much time attacking him?"

On the subject of my alleged drivel, methinks thou dost posteth too much.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Explaining metaphysics to the nation,
I wish he'd explain his Explanation."

--Byron, Don Juan

Look, I am not here to copy and paste ECO. If you would like to start a discussion about a specific line, then fine.

I must admit I hate playing against the Petroff , will look thru my databases on the weekend to show wot I used to do (not very effectively) against it , so indeed there must be some merit to it. I still feel the french could be the way , wots the common feelings about the french these days ?

I tried the Petroff about two years ago shortly after I started to play 1...e5 and I was completely crushed by a much higher rated opponent. After that experiance I dropped the Petroff, which perhaps was a little unfair to the Petroff, since I just learned the opening I obviously did not understand it well enough and then I was crushed by an opponent who knew the Petroff very well.

However after trying different openings I now play the Two Knight. 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc5 Nf6. And even though I am not a theoretical wizard I have a lot of fun in that opening. Really many players on my level allows me to play the Two Knight, so I get it quite often.

However occational someone plays the Ruy Lopez against me, and I am having big problems in that opening, the closed nature of the Ruy do not fit my temper, so I am desperately looking for something to play against the Ruy, I tried the Marshall but almost all my opponents did not allow it, so lately I started to look at the Schliemann/Jänisch 3...f5. If Radjabov can play it against super-GMs it can not be that bad. But so far I only played it in blitz and on internet servers. But next time I face the Ruy in a tournament game I think I will play it.

I hate playing white against the french so it might be a good idea to try if you dont mind a closed center. I dont like positions where the d- and e-pawns are blocked, I prefer to play open or half-open positions. But I have been considering to study the French, just to learn to play that kind of positions.

Well, the real test is not the result of the one game, but more how comfortable you felt playing the middlegame you got out of it. If it felt very comfortable, but you just got beat, that might suggest another try. If you didn't like or didn't understand, or even just felt bored with the position you got, then maybe it's not the right opening for you.




Give it a try. If you like the Two Kniggets, you might like the Schliemann. The disadvantage of both is that they have problems against a well-prepared opponent. The advantage is that, not being main lines, opponents often aren't that well prepared.