Critical views on
Nimzowitsch's ideas
A life filled with
conflicts
Nimzowitsch was all his life a controversial person . On a human level he was
maybe accepted towards
the end of his life, but his chess philosophy was still disputed. People of a
matter-of-fact disposition
have not been able to accept his partly cryptic statements, such as that the
overprotected point is a
source of energy from which the protecting pieces can gather momentum. (p.231)
However the debate
has been going on continously, example of which is that in 1958 (23 years after
the author's death) it
was judged suitable to publish the five instalments from 1925-27, put together
into one volume. A second
German edition came in 1965, and the third in 1999. Besides, several works of
other authors, writing about
Nimzowitsch, have been published in the meantime.
Chess friend Mattias Vettel tells us
there was actually an all-inclusive volume, although with a different title
page,
soon after the five "Lieferungen" had appeared in 1925-27. Evidently
this fact was overlooked when the 1958 edition
was called "Erste Auflage".
Weak opposition?
An objection to Nimzowitsch has been that his system only works against weak
opposition. It is true that
many of his examples are taken from such games, but on the other hand he took
part in strong tournaments
on a world level, with opponents such as Schlechter,
Tarrasch, Teichmann, Aljechine, Capablanca, Rubinstein,
Spielmann, Bernstein, Torre, Marshall, Duras, Grünfeld, Vidmar, Réti,
Bogoljubow, Mieses, Sämisch,
Tartakower, Kashdan, Kostic, Bogoljubow, Colle and Euwe, not to forget
Stahlberg, Stoltz, and Lundin
("the three Swedish musketeers" from the Olympic Games in Warsaw
1935).
In the years 1927-29,
when Nimzowitsch had his peak period, Aljechin was very polite and appreciative
towards
his chief challenger, but in 1942, that is in the middle
of the war, when Aljechin sided with the Nazis (whether voluntarily
or under pressure) he published critical views on Jewish player in general,
including Ninzowitsch.
A primitive judgement of Aljechin is "antiarische
Schachauffassung", but he also adds that
1. The ideas of Nimzowitsch were by no means original;
2. His proposals were not
objective in so far as that they were mostly based on his own experiences
(meaning that the opponents were not strong enough).
Validity and
reliability
Sometimes he loses because of a mistake, and also in the analyses of his games
there may be some kind
of flaw, but despite this the game and his comments are interesting from
the point of view of the system.
We ought to make a difference between the theoretician and the practitioner. In
his games there are a
certain number of faulty moves, which could be seen as proof that he did not
always practise what he preached.
If we borrow two
terms from statistics we can say that the theoretician has a high validity,
while the
practitioner's reliability is somewhat lower.
Dogmatism
Nimzowitsch has sometimes been accused of being just as dogmatic as
Tarrasch, and there may be a grain
of truth in such a judgement, but he has never pretended that his system should
solve all problems, and he
explicitly warns his followers against giving way to mechanical thinking. As he
said in Danish:
”Nej, lidt intuition skal der til”. (Björn Nielsen: Nimzowitsch -
Danmarks Skaklaerer, 1945).
Prophylaxis and risk-taking
In what regards the assertion that the system only works against weaker
opponents we should realize that
the aim of a prophylactic system is to consolidate your position, not to attack
too soon. The opportunity
of attacking will show up as soon as your opponent makes a mistake. Capablanca
and Aljechin seldom made
any mistakes, they had had their own in-built system and an instinct for strong
chess, but this fact does not
prove that Nimzowitsch's system does not work. Aljechin made an interesting
point of the two "ideological
schools" in the 20ies, "The What", and "The How",
meaning that to Nimzowitsch et. con. it was important
how they won.
Present-day top players know how to
combine prophylaxis with a risk-taking that should still stay within the
borders of a draw, pretty much as Spielmann used to do, although with a higher
degree of exactness in their
calculations, and above all, a higher skill in the calculation of very long
sequences of moves.
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