Making a plan in the Petrov

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bulkhead99

Recently, I lost this game that should be a draw (GM games are draws >95% of the time). However, I found that I couldn't find a good plan, and without really making a mistake (yes, I made mistakes later in the endgame, but I was already much worse by then), I lost the game. If anyone would like to provide insight on what a better plan was, any thought/input/ideas are appreciated! Thank you!

Here is the game: The game

bulkhead99
llama45 wrote:

13...Nh5

Seems you were trying to make something happen.

In equal positions with symmetrical pawns like this you're not going to be able to make a plan on move 13. You're just going to make minor improvements. So d5 comes to mind. Re8 comes to mind, and then your development was fine, but at the same time all your minor pieces except maybe the knight on f6 can be improved.

An easy observation is that the only open file is the e file... so move your minors off of it. As a simple example Re8 Nf8 Ng6 Bf8 Bd7.

And then during this process if the structure changes dramatically or if your opponent makes some kind of mistake you can try to exploit that... but like I said, it seems the urge to do something right away screwed you up.

Thanks for the reply! I agree, I feel like I'm not good at evaluating when I have the time to re-maneuver my pieces (obviously I can in closed positions, but this position was never closed). One of the ideas I discussed with somebody else was deploying the bishop to f5 instead of e6, clearing the e-file, and in a slightly more active position. During the game, I was concerned that this undefended bishop would get kicked around too much with Nh4 or Nd4, but now I realize I have a very solid position after retreating to d7 or g6 respectively.

 

bulkhead99
llama45 wrote:

Some GM games in similarly boring positions can be pretty instructive. They can get their flank pawns just right to cause all sorts of problems in the endgame. One of the big ideas is restricting the enemy pieces. So for example in a B+R vs B+R endgame maybe you put a lot of your pawns on the same color as the enemy bishop to restrict it.

Of course it's double edged because this also makes your pawns targets... it takes a player better than me to squeeze out wins from this, but I've seen some Karpov games and Fischer games where stuff like this happens. Not an easy position for lower rated players to squeeze a win out of.

I'll have to look at some of those games. Although looking at the draw rate from the lichess opening explorer, it seems like these games are almost guaranteed to be drawn in this queen trade line. I guess if someone wants to trade the queens in the opening, especially the Petrov, it probably is not a good idea to have high expectations.