At this moment of the game I realised that I had to decide on the palcement of my rooks. The question was whether the game was going to open up on the centre or on the queenside. 

I usually face the question of where to develop my rooks. What would you do in this situation? What factors should I take into account when deciding? I think the position calls for a queenside advance, but I was constantly afraid of the e pawn break. 

Later I lost the game, and I am really frustrated because I lost it positionally and I still can't decide on which was the best course of action.

Comments and suggestions will be appreciated.

You black or white ?

I am black, I wouldn't place the board flipped around if I was white.

uscftigerprowl I thank you for your answer, but I was looking for a more positional type of answer, related to my question "how to know in whoch area of the board play is going to occur?"

Where to place rooks

On Open Files!

The diagram you showed has a position on it. However, the position you have is already suffering from positional errors you made prior to that position.

I do not know all the moves you played before that diagram. However, I see moves which look wrong to me. Which makes me think something bad must of happened prior to the diagram.

If I was to do a best guess.

I would guess the game started with the move 1.d4. The position turned into a Queens Gambit Decline type of position.

Than your opponent ended up taking on d5 with his C pawn which turned the position into the Exchange Variation.

Your opponent did bishop pins.

I believe they played moves like Bg5 and Bb5.

You ended up exchanging the dark bishop with your dark bishop. My guess is the exchange happened on the e7 square.

Once that happen your opponent played his other light square bishop to b5. You blocked with your knight and than reinforced your knight with a move like Ne7 or Nxe7. Your opponent than took the knight with his bishop and you retook with your knight.

After that you ended up moving your queen several times to get it to the b4 square.

However, in the process you forgot your d5 pawn was hanging. So you reinforced it with your F rook to defend the pawn.

This structure is sometimes called the Orthodox, Carlsbad, or QGD exchange.

Sometimes white will try for an e4 break here, but the main idea is the minority attack. White will often play on the queenside, advancing his 2 pawns into black's with the goal of some exchanges resulting in a target (backward pawn or isolated pawn).

Black more often uses the e4 square for kingside play, so if we're only looking at the structure and what normally happens you got the ideas a bit backwards.

The f rook very often goes to the e file, to add control to e4, and can later even be used in a rook lift to help attack white's king (Re6-h6 or g6). The h rook is less set. There are different ways to meet the minority attack which result in different weak points for black, and the h rook will move accordingly. Sometimes to passively defend one of the weaknesses, sometimes to an open or half-open file on the queenside. Sometimes it will join the f rook in the attack and they double on the e file.

Very generally speaking, rooks don't like to stare at their own pawns unless it's a passed pawn in the endgame when that's often ideal. Putting a rook behind a pawn usually suggests you're going to push (now or later) an adjacent pawn.

-----------------------------------------

All that said, the position you posted is noticeably different. It looks like you got white's light square bishop for a knight, so white probably screwed up with BxN very early in the game. You also have a knight on c6 which is uncommon for d4-d5 openings. In this case I think c5 is a reasonable pawn break to play for, and the rook on d8 makes sense because after the c5 break, the d5 pawn may be isolated and need support.

However when you play an opponent who plays more reasonably in the opening, this sort of idea will be uncommon. If you want general positional advice, then again, rooks don't want to stare at the back of pawns. Just like bishops don't want to be stuck behind a pawn. Open files for (ideally) infiltration. Half open files for scope and to pressure pawns. Defensively on closed files only when necessary.

The position in post #1 has no open files but has 2 semi ( or half ) open files . It is usually best to put your rooks on open files but if there are none then half-open files are often good as well and if there are no open nor semi-open files then put your rooks on files that are likely to become open . These are general rules of thumb that are meant to help guide you and shouldnt be treated as strict "rules"  dogma as there are always exceptions .