My System: a Treatise on Chess

1 Analytical Supplement for Aron Nimzovich’s My System: A Treatise on Chess Computer-assisted corrections, additions and enhancements by Taylor Kingston Copyright © 2018 Taylor Kingston, All Rights Reserved 2 As any serious chess player knows, Aron Nimzovich (1886-1935, pictured at right) was one of the strongest masters of the first third of the 20th century. And his book Mein System, first published in German in a series of five installments over 1925-1926, and in English as My System in 1929, is one of the most influential works on the game. Along with Réti’s Modern Ideas in Chess (1922) and Tartakower’s Die Hypermoderne Schachpartie (1925), it is considered a Bible of the Hypermodern movement that reshaped opening theory and middle game strategy in those years. Having already given electronic scrutiny to works by several of his great contemporaries — Lasker, Alekhine, Capablanca, Euwe, and Tartakower — I was intrigued to find out how Nimzovich’s magnum opus would fare and compare against both them, and against merciless digital objectivity. The results proved extremely interesting. I hope the reader will gain as much instruction and enjoyment from this work as I did in preparing it. Taylor Kingston, San Diego, California USA, April 2018 Contents: Nimzovich and Hypermodernism Page 3 Later Opinions of My System Page 4 Analytical Methodology Page 7 Summary of Analytical Results Page 8 Analytical Findings Page 12 An Ingenious Example of My System (Kmoch parody) Page 168 Larsen and Euwe on Nimzovich (Euwe-Pilnik, Amsterdam 1950) Page 173 3 Before getting to the analytical results, some prefatory remarks, about the Hypermodern-Classicist debate of Nimzovich’s time, later opinions of My System, Nimzovich as a person, and finally the methodology of our analysis. Nimzovich and Hypermodernism: Nimzovich was a very controversial figure in the chess world of his time; his differences with Siegbert Tarrasch (1862-1934), the pre-eminent authority on the game up to around 1920, produced the greatest theoretical debate chess has ever seen, the clash between the Classicists of the older generation and the Hypermoderns – e.g. Nimzovich, Réti, Tartakower, Breyer, Bogolyubov, and for a while Alekhine – most born about twenty to thirty years later. That whole debate will not be covered here; the reader, if he is not already familiar with it, can easily learn about it from any number of chess encyclopedias, historical surveys, biographies of relevant players, etc. In retrospect it has become something of a tempest in a teapot: eventually the classical thesis merged with the hypermodern antithesis to form a synthesis that nowadays is taken for granted (see for example John Watson’s remark below). But at the time, the principal hypermoderns, especially Nimzovich, seemed to regard it as a major intellectual struggle comparable to that between Copernicans and Ptolemaics, or Darwinians and Creationists. Some representative statements from that period: I declare that, had it not been for a feeling of animosity towards Tarrasch, I should never have learned to play chess properly. To play better than Tarrasch – that was the formula of all my yearnings in the period 1904-1906. To all my readers I can give the pleasant advice: If you wish to achieve results, select a born enemy and attempt to “chastise” him by toppling him from his pedestal. — Nimzovich, in an autobiographical booklet published in Russian in 19291 In the first place there is no Hypermodern School, and in the second place Nimzovich is its founder. — attributed to Richard Teichmann (1868-1925, an old-school classicist) 1 The translation quoted here is from Raymond Keene’s Aron Nimzowitsch: A Reappraisal, B.T. Batsford, London, 1999, p. 20 4 Today we see in chess the fight of aspiring Americanism against the old European intellectual life: a struggle between the technique of a Capablanca, a virtuoso in whose play one can find nothing tangible to object to, and between great European masters, all of them artists ... in the idea of chess and the development of the chess mind we have a picture of the intellectual struggle of mankind. — Richard Réti, in Modern Ideas in Chess (1922) Chess Fundamentals was first published thirteen years ago. Since then there have appeared at different times a number of articles dealing with the so-called Hypermodern Theory. Those who have read the articles may well have thought that something new, of vital importance, had been discovered ... [but there] has been no change in the fundamentals. The change has been only a change of form, and not always for the best at that. — J.R. Capablanca, writing in 1934 in the preface to the second edition of his book Chess Fundamentals Dr. Tarrasch graces us with the great many insights and gems of this [pre-World War I] interval, whereas the chaos which then ensued in everyday life as in politics, in chess as in art – war, the re-evaluation of all values, the overthrow of all greats, the adoration of new truths ... What shape has this tsunami of spiritual subversion taken in chess? The very first tournament of the post bellum (Göteborg 1920) made plain that a new generation of rebellious spirits had arisen ... who – combining the zeal of a fighter with the fervor of a prophet – have revolutionized the millennium of chess thought! — Savielly Tartakower, in the introduction to Die Hypermoderne Schachpartie (The Hypermodern Chess Game, 1925; translation 2015 by Jared Becker) Later opinions of My System: An assortment of observations and opinions about Nimzovich and his book, which may (or may not) prove relevant as our analysis is presented. Nimzowitsch,2 a naturalized Dane, is the Hamlet of chess. Strange and subtle ideas are found in the play of this, the greatest of the so-called ‘Hypermoderns,’ who have developed and refined the theories of Steinitz ... he does not plan combinative tactics with a few pieces, but wide strategies, involving nearly all the forces. — Brian Harley, in Chess for the Fun of It (1933), p. 156 [My System is] Nimzowitsch’s immortal masterpiece. The greatest of all chess books, in the sense that it has, more than any other, really changed the methods of master players – and equally, of course, those of strong amateurs. We all hear books described as “must” books, but this is the “must” book. — IM C.J.S. Purdy, on page 62 of the magazine Chess World, 1 March 1949 For many years Nimzovich labored over his book, which finally appeared in the late 1920s as My System. The title is really a misnomer, since what he had was not a system, but a collection of insights. Still it is revealing of the man – he had to have the feeling that he was revolutionizing chess from top to bottom. The need to prove his theories sometimes proved costly in tournaments and was another factor which kept him from the chess title crown. — GM Reuben Fine, in The World’s Great Chess Games (2nd edition, 1976), p. 128 2 Nimzovich’s name (originally Niemzowitsch) gets various spellings in chess literature. The quotes here use whatever spelling that writer gave. 5 Nimzowitsch contributed more to the game than most of his contemporaries. He traces the beginning of the hypermodern movement back to 1904 when he first met Tarrasch, who criticized his play adversely, an incident Nimzowitsch never forgot. From that moment he began to re- examine the formalistic teachings of Tarrasch, to which the hypermodern movement was, in large measure, a reaction ... Nimzowitsch wrote three important books ... My System is the most important ... Notwithstanding the author’s claim, few, if any, of the stratagems and manoeuvres he describes were originated by him; but his exposition is brilliant, effective, and entertaining. — from The Oxford Companion to Chess (2nd edition, 1996), by Hooper & Whyld, p. 273 Nimzowitsch’s contribution to chess literature was more than just witty ridicule of Tarrasch or the discovery of a novel method of play. It was the elaboration of a new chess vocabulary which made intelligible the hitherto vaguely articulated strategy of master-players. He possessed an unrivalled facility for capturing the essence of an already known operation or structure with a memorable and meaningful word or phrase, which thereby increased speed of comprehension and assisted clarity of thought. — Nathan Divinsky, in The Batsford Chess Encyclopedia (1990), p. 144 Nimzovich delighted in playing moves that were condemned under the stern diktat of Tarrasch. Sometimes he went too far and paid the penalty, but his experimental attitude introduced a multitude of new ideas into our understanding of chess. Nimzowitsch’s magnum opus, My System, is the bible of the Hypermoderns, a mixture of brilliant insights and strange eccentricity. — IM William Hartston, in The Kings of Chess (1985), p. 101 Nimzowitsch was the most original chess player that ever lived ... [his games] are “witch chess, heathen and beautiful.” Nimzowitsch did more than entertain us with fascinating chess. He gave the world an extraordinary work called My System ... There is hardly a chess player who has not been influenced (and benefitted) by My System. For this marvelous book has made masters out of amateurs, and grandmasters out of masters. — Irving Chernev, in Twelve Great Chess Players and Their Best Games (1976), p. 1 If you don't read My System until after you've become an experienced player, you may initially feel disappointed that the material is elementary and almost self-evident. Yes, the center; yes, open files, the seventh rank, how to treat the pawn chain, doubled pawns, isolated pawns, and so forth. We know all that. But this is itself revealing. If we feel that his ideas are obvious and his suggested techniques routine, we are paying Nimzowitsch a great compliment, because many of these various concepts and techniques were unfamiliar to the chess public when Nimzowitsch first systematized his thought (as well as to experienced masters).

Load more