I've only played the exchange slav once in my life (in tournament play). I played it as black and it was really drawish the whole game. IM Sam Shankland (who does video lessons here on chess.com firmly believes this line to be a draw.
A Guaranteed Draw? - Slav Exchange Variation
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The Slav Exchange offers a TON of scope to play for a win, even at the master level.
If you strip a database search of all the results where a game results in a draw in 20 moves or less, then you essentially get the search results for "real" games, and get to toss out all the pre-arranged tournament draws.
In real games, where both sides try to win, the Slav exchange has numbers comparable to every other major opening complex, despite the symmetrical pawn structure.
Raymond Keene's 1984 book "An Opening Repertoire for White" recommends the exchange variation against the Slav, and he annotates a couple of wins for White. One was Portisch's win over then-World Champion Petrosian in 1967. The line may be very drawish at the top levels but that doesn't mean it has to be at the club level. For most of us the last mistake loses regardless of the choice of opening!
johnyhomeless makes an outstanding point: you have to think about the mood of the players that make up this huge draw percentage: it's quite plausible that a lot of these people played the opening with the intention of playing a very safe game. It's possible that if very sharp players played this line and tried to win, the statistics would look different.
Jul 13, 2012
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#6
At amateur level, I believe this variation is one of the more easy variations to learn compared to other slavs.
And even though it is drawish on GM level, everything can happen. Just look here:
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-showcase/test
Sorry, but I had to show it. A chess experience for lifetime!
I am not a very experianced chess player, although I do take a keen interest in openings, and I recently stumbled upon the Slav exchange variation (1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. cxd5). I knew the Slav had a reputation for being a bit drawish but this line results in 70% draws, which seemed a bit odd at first, that from over 7000 games, and three moves, this opening could push so many games directly towards a draw.
Intrigued, I began stumbling through game explorer, as I often do when procrastinating, and by the 10th move of the main line, 99.9% of masters' games result in draws (from almost 1500 games).
I know this may seem very familiar to a flipped four-knights game, but even that can't almost guarantee a win. There are even games on the chess.com database where the players are so familiar with this position, that draws have been agreed by move 8. It seems this must be a well known (even though I had never heard of it until tonight) line for draws to agreed so early, but I challenge anyone to find another, equally dead line!
Thoughts?