How to win a drawish game?

This topic is mainly for examples and comments how to win a drawish game. The first example is a tournament game of mine, which was to be a drawish opening; Slav Defense: Exchange Variation (D13).

Here are some other players' notes about the opening:

http://www.chess.com/opening/eco/D13_Slav_Defense_Exchange_Variation

This game was played quite fast in two days, which I think is something between blitz and correspondence chess, perhaps the way I enjoy chess most right now. I included below a computer analysis (~2000) with some remarks.

Black's eleventh move is 11.... 0-0 and the game is a drawish. White's next move 12. Nd2?! is passive and I think gives the opponent a false feeling of security.

After couple of more moves white makes a mistake 14. Nd6?, which actually did it's purpose to get more pressure on the Black Queen. In fast games it is more of a rule than an exception to make a crucial mistake under pressure.

The 15th move 15. Nxb7?! is marked as an inaccuracy, but my point of view is that these three white's moves mentioned above did actually the job in this game.

The first of them gives tempo to the Black and two later "mistakes" are taking the tempo totally to the White. My opponent put it this way after the game: "I have a major weakness in my game in that it is based on reactive play rather than proactive."

Due to some positive feedback on my blog I am emboldened enough to present another example of how to win a drawish game. It is also a game of a central control. If you would happen to have interest in it, I can later add a computer analysis of it here.

NIce games jimthemagic,

I especially liked you pawn & Bishop manuevering in the second game. Your two central passed pawns were awsome...and black knew it!!

Thanks for sharing and way to control the center

Thank you knightLite for your comment. Here is a computer analysis (~2000 strength) of the second game:

Here is on the contrary a bad example how to draw a win game. The computer analysis shows some winning continuations which I missed. Although I disagree 4... c6 being a mistake. This analysis is about 2000 rating and a lot higher level players; for example Bent Larsen, has played the move. Anyway this was a useful practise on my way to add Scandinavian to my opening repertoire and analysis is needed.

Another bad example how to draw a win(?) game. Here I am playing King's Indian Defense against a higher rated opponent. This is part of the team match Macedonia vs. Finland. I checked the score three times during the play; it was first 0 - 1, next time 0 - 6 and when I had two draws 1 - 10.

Couple of times during the game I had a feeling it's a win, but I never could find a proper solution. At the point my friendly opponent offered the draw, I had had the game with me even on the beach, but never could do the winning moves. My last thought was that the solution might be my black bishop?!

There is this tournament where my points seem to get more and more important. This game is probably full of blunders, but due to some problems with computer analysis, I do not see all of them. I apologize for my poor annotation too, I'm quite new with this.

Anyway this game is a King's Indian Defense, in which I'm White. Whether I underestimated my lower rated opponent or not, I would not wanna play a game like this anymore. That does not prevent learning from it.

Here is a computer analysis of the game above. I thought someone might be interested. I was at least, and probably learned a thing or two of it, I hope.

This is a computer analysis (~2000) of a team match game I recently played. Haven't made any deeper analysis yet, but I feel I was quite lucky. This

Queen's Gambit Declined: Neo-Orthodox Variation (D55)

is also an example how to win a drawish game.