How to avoid the draw

Hello There,

I will face on Monday a player who draws a lot of games at my club.

I will be white. Is there a way I could avoid him playing the draw?

I usually open with Scotch game or Ruy Lopez, but if he counters with Petrov, I want to avoid a situation where we just mirror each other ......

Thanks

Fire5555

Thanks, how do you interrupt repetitive moves?

check others 1st!

Make sure you don't end up with opposite coloured bishops by swapping the right pieces off.

taking risks in the game, ie. exchange sacrifices, avoidance of simplifications,losts of pieces on the board and square hunting more or less avoids draws

If you know he is going for the Petrov Defence you can prepare something a little special - the Cochrane Gambit.

It is very sharp, probably not really entirely correct, but that need not bother us mere mortals at club level. It's fun to play, and if Black sees this for the first time, he will find it difficult to survive, I think.

If you speak any german I recommend you take a look at this site:

http://www.herderschach.de/Training/Online/tr20e1.html

For english language information on this gambit you can start out at this page:

http://kenilworthian.blogspot.co.at/2011/03/cochrane-gambit.html

and follow their links under "web resources".

For instance:

http://www.schach.gmxhome.de/boofreng.htm

http://nezhmet.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/the-fabulous-80s-the-mighty-cochrane-gambit/

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1020703

or

http://web.archive.org/web/20050212120603/http://hechiceros.ods.org/site/aper/ape00003.html

(spanish)

If you look into this for a couple of hours and get a good feeling for the ideas and plans you need not memorize all the possible variations. In my opinion it is worth a try. Good luck and enjoy your game!

Thanks a lot for all the responses

I got an idea to set an opponent in chessmaster to be very defensive, will try it out tonight

Hinanawi you say that if I check him he will have to stop copying but at the same time you say that you cannot avoid a forced draw, so which one is it? 

Thanks Alpenschach will have a look

play king's gambit, I'll guarantee that at our level it won't end up as a draw :)

It's a cheapo really, but here is a common opening mistake that happens a lot in the Cochrane Gambit: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nx4 d6 4.Nxf7 Kxf7 5.d4 Nxe4??

Here is what my database has to say to this:

To avoid the draw:

Win instead.

Sorry. Not very helpful I guess?

Maybe, play better moves?

Wow. Tough question. Not sure how to answer.

That's a very interesting game. But why not 7.Qd5+ after 6... g6 winning the knight?

Lyusternik: If you look at the alternative variations given to the 7th move you will see that in fact Qd5+ winning the knight is much more commonly played (and better).

Maybe I should have made that the mainline when I extracted the relevant games from my database. Sorry for making this confusing. It is too many games I cramped into one single pgn really.

In fact after 6...g6 I have only 2 games with 7.Bc4+ one of them won by White the other by Black and 25 games with the much better 7.Qd5+.

The game with the most highly rated players in this line is Dimitri Reinderman (2525) -vs- Paul Van der Sterren (2535) 1-0

This game is quite interesting and instructive in my opinion. Not only because of the opening, but I especially enjoyed the finish. I am impressed by the excellent and efficient coordination of the white pieces.

Play as you normally do, just because an opening is drawish does not mean there is a large amount of considerable tactics and skill needed to ensure a draw.

I usually play the "drawish" Slav exchange variation as white, but I win or lose more often than I draw.

One thing is certain, with the cochrane gambit you won't get a draw!!! 

It's very risky though

By a lot of draws what do you mean - a fourth of his games, a third, half, more than half? I've known of a couple of players accused of drawing their otb games a lot and too often but in actuality both drew about one third of their games, which is above average on the amateur level but doesn't come close to how often top players draw. All the people making the accusations thought the players drew most of the time, just goes to show how far off perceptions tend to be when people have a bias against something. 

1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.Nf3 This avoids the petrov and usually transpose to the scotch game

Edit: Black can still aim for the russian modern attack: 3...Nf3 4.e5

Fire5555 you have a condition known as draw paranoia caused by reading about grandmasters who draw games of chess.

You yourself are almost as likely to get hit by lightning as to draw a game of chess.

Avoid rook and pawn endgames.