Abstract: When mining high-rank coal with strong adsorption and weak desorption, the synthesized mining face, due to the lifting of mining stress, will encounter the situation of breaking coal, surrounding rock and the adjacent coal seam releasing a large amount of gas instantly into the mining face, which is very easy to cause the gas overlimit accident of the working face. For this reason, based on the characteristics of cracks in different areas of the overlying rock layer in the open area, the extraction mechanism of the roof extraction roadway was elaborated, and three methods, namely, the roof extraction roadway at different locations, directional long drilling holes at different horizontal and vertical locations of the roof and numerical simulation of the stress release effect of the overlying rock layer were used to study the effect of the gas extraction in the mining area, and the method of determining the optimal extraction location in the open area based on the stress release ratio of the overlying rock was put forward. The method of determining the optimal extraction location of the mining zone based on the stress release ratio of the overlying rock is proposed. The results show that: roof extraction roadway and roof directional long drilling for directional extraction in the mining area, the best position is 25 m horizontally from the return roadway of the return mining face, and 50～55 m vertically from the top plate of the coal seam.