At what level do certain openings become drawis...

Its often said that certain openings are drawish and then often said at our level no opening is drawish. At what level would you consider certain openings to start showing their drawish characteristics?

In the same vein at what level do certain openings become unsound to play regularly........just at what point do players develop the ability to play against certain openings and take advantage of weakening moves like 1.h4 or 1.g4 etc.

Asuming both players of equal strength in all phases of the game, I'd say early Queen exchanges are rather drawish (i.e 1. e4 e5 2. d4 d6 3. dxe5 dxe5 4. Qxd8+ Kxd8) other than that, the heavily analysied openings i guess (where both players are following theory 20-30 moves deep+ using databases)

but I suppose openings only really come drawish when both players stop making blunders, and even if they do, white/black is not in position to take advantage

I believe that chess masters (2200), perhaps strong expers and candidate masters understand how opening transposes to middle game and how to play for a draw. Being a true patzer myself, I am only guessing here but when I listen to the big boys talking at the chess club their understaning of the game is very different to mine. However, although there is a lot of technique in endgames even an average club player (moi) knows how to draw certain endings (opposite colored bishops, exchanging piece for remaining pawns etc.). When two good players settle a draw in a middlegame it is often said that they saw no life in the position. Another reason could be that good players have more to lose in a tournament if they don't get enough points, amateurs play on until solution.

a.) I think that the main element here is blunders. It doesn't really matter what opening people play when the game is decided by leaving pieces en prise. (I'm giving an educated guess that games between two 1000-1300 RHP players would fall into this category)

b.) After the obvious mistakes are happening more seldom the games are decided by fairly easy tactics - removal of the guard etc. (Again a crude estimate would be 1300-1800 RHP)

c.) After tactical oversights occur less and less the positional factors dominate. It is probably here that players can start to direct the game towards a draw right from the opening. Similarly here the sloppy opening move (1.h4) would be rightly punished. (I'm guessing that this category would be something like 1800+ RHP)

All the above categories are natually rather overlapping and flexible. Anyhow the level of play has to be sufficiently high so that the frequancy of wild swings on the evaluations decreases. I usually analyse my games afterwards with Fritz and it is funny to see how computer's evaluation changes from side to side - most often both players have had the advantage at some point during my game.

Of course when the players are unevenly matched the openings matter less. Personally I've had few times a "drawn" ending against a Fide Master in a G/15 game, needless to say that both times I managed to leave the table with zero points.


- bahus

What I mean is people say things like Petrov Defence etc are drawish openings. At what level does this start to become apparent, there are much sharper openings that draw less at amature and GM level, yet the Petrov is less likely to be a draw at amature level than GM.....at just which rating does this shift start to happen.