One of the commonly repeated themes amongst a lot of players is that draws must, by definition, be boring.
After all, there is no winner, so therefore it must have been a tame effort, right?
Dig a little deeper though and you quickly realize that not all draws are created equally.
In fact, Soviet chess journalist Leonid Verkhovsky wrote a book call Draw which contained a forward by none other than Mikhail Tal. The thrust of that book was to show that there is a difference between a tame draw where no one took risks, and draws on the edge of a knife where sensational defense made the difference.
So earlier today I saw this Facebook post by GM Emil Sutovsky.
So I decided to do exactly what Emil was suggesting and look at the games.
I show them here for you now.
Next time you see someone say something like “So many draws – how boring!” take that with a grain of salt. They may be completely wrong in their assumption.
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
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