Chess: The Petroff Defense

By: Alex Faull

In chess, white always moves first, which causes black to usually take a more defensive approach to the game. Because of this, black will spend its first few moves defending its center pawn (see previous posts for information on center pawns and their importance). However, sometimes one might choose to attack in order to defend, and choose to use The Petroff Defense.

The defining move of The
Petroff Defense, Nf6.

Very typical and solid opening
position for white.

To the left is pretty average early king-pawn opening position. White has moved a knight to f3, threatening take Black's pawn and also defending the d4 square. To the left, we have one of the possible responses to white, The Petroff Defense. Yasser Seirawan sums up the logic behind this defense quite well in his book, Winning Chess: Openings. He says, "Instead of busying himself with the defense of his e5-pawn, Black counters with an attack of his own against White's e4-pawn"(Seirawan, 40).


While defending the e5-pawn is a solid option, threatening White's e4-pawn also is solid. Black is basically giving up his own center pawn so he can attack his opponents center pawn when he uses The Petroff Defense. Because of this, both pawns, as well as a few other pieces tend to get traded when this defense is used. What pieces get traded is mostly impacted by White's first move after black first threatens the e4-pawn. According to Seirawan, White's best to options are capturing Black's center pawn with the knight at f3, or moving the pawn at d2 to d4, putting another piece into position to attack Black's e5-pawn.

An important thing I learned about The Petroff Defense when using it against a chess AI was that it only works effectively on king pawn openings. There isn't a queen and king Petroff Defense, just the king Petroff Defense. This is mostly because in a queen pawn opening, the pawns are defended by the queens, so trying to be aggressive and attack White's pawn doesn't work as well, since it comes with that defense.

The Petroff Defense is a very solid defense, but it usually will cause pieces to be lost on both sides. So the question you need to ask yourself when using this defense is as follows: is it worth sacrificing your own pieces in order to take opposing pieces?

Work Cited:

Seirawan, Yasser. Winning Chess Openings. Gloucester Publishers Ltd, 2003.