Witschcraft

Last week, in the context of the discovery of the chessboard of Sir John Tenniel, the Times related a famous, possibly apocryphal story in which Aron Nimzowitsch mounted a table after yielding to a lesser player, shouting ‘why must I lose to this idiot?’ Nimzo is also in the news after the recent publication of a detailed monograph on his wilderness years in the Baltic and Scandinavia between the start of the first world war and his re-emergence into tournament play in the mid-1920s. The monograph (Aron Nimzowitsch on the Road to Chess Mastery 1886-1924) by Per Skjoldager and Jorn Erik Nielsen, is fascinating on Nimzo’s notorious disputes with Dr Tarrasch (Freud to Nimzo’s Jung) and gives many previously missing games against Scandinavian amateurs.

Nimzowitsch-Tarrasch; San Sebastian 1912; French Defence

1 e4 c5 2 c3 e6 3 d4 d5 4 e5 Nc6 5 Nf3 Qb6 6 Bd3 cxd4 7 cxd4 Bd7 8 Be2 White is forced to waste a tempo on the defence of the d4-pawn – a consequence of his inaccurate 6th move. 8 … Nge7 9 b3 Nf5 10 Bb2 Bb4+ 11 Kf1 Because of the pressure on d4, White is deprived of the right to castle. 11 … Be7 12 g3 a5 13 a4 Rc8 14 Bb5 Nb4 15 Nc3 (see diagram 1) 15 … Na6 This is a dubious manoeuvre. Tarrasch suggested 15 … Bxb5+ 16 Nxb5 Nc2 ‘with the threat of … Ne3+’, but Nimzowitsch had prepared a refutation: 17 Rc1 Nce3+ 18 fxe3 Nxe3+ 19 Ke2 Nxd1 20 Rxc8+ Kd7 21 Rxh8 Nxb2 22 Rc1 winning. 16 Kg2 Nc7 17 Be2 Bb4 18 Na2 Na6 19 Bd3 Ne7 20 Rc1 Nc6 21 Nxb4 Naxb4 22 Bb1 Over the last 10 moves White has made colossal progress: he has hidden his king at g2, overcome his lag in development and preserved his light-squared bishop from exchange.