KID Petrosian-2

The game presented this time was played sometime last year after I had moved to Santa Clara. The Petrosian formation played out features the Stein plan consisting of queenside restriction with a5 and Nc5, together with dark square play with h6 and g5 by black. Black trades pieces by playing f5, giving himself a passed e pawn (which later decides the game) and ceding light square blockade to white. White seems to have things under control (or so he thought), wrecking black's queenside with what appears to be a promising endgame. He does the rook lift Ra3-b3. However, it seems that he makes a few inaccurate trades in relation to the entrenched knight on h3 (perhaps he was worried about tricks on f2). At any rate, he misplays it further by trading the h pawn for black's g pawn (getting rid of the qualitative majority is not a bad thing, what?), opening the h file for the black rook. Black then makes good his threat to push the passed e pawn, together with his well posted bishop on d4 and threats to activate the rook, and it appears that although white has a superior static position, he cannot immediately bring his pieces (other than his king) to stop the e pawn. A draw was hence agreed. It is noted that towards the end, time may have been a complicating influence.

It shows, among other things, that blockades alone aren't sufficient, for blockading pieces may be called upon to play a role elsewhere. In other words, there is such a thing as the stability of the blockade which must be called into consideration while setting them up. That being said, I think I was wrong in exchanging my beautiful blockading knight for his Nh3, which, although threatening, was something that had to be tolerated until white had made progress elsewhere.