Danish chess player and writer (1886?1935)
Aron Nimzowitsch
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Born
| (
1886-11-07
)
7 November 1886
Riga
, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire
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Died
| 16 March 1935
(1935-03-16)
(aged 48)
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Citizenship
| Russian Empire (until 1917)
Stateless (1917?1922)
Denmark (1922?1935)
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Occupation
| Chess player
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Notable work
| My System
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Aron Nimzowitsch
(
Latvian
:
?rons Nimcovi?s
;
Russian
:
Аро?н Иса?евич Нимцо?вич
,
Aron Isayevich Nimtsovich
; 7 November 1886 ? 16 March 1935) was a Latvian-born Danish
chess
player and writer. In the late 1920s, Nimzowitsch was one of the best chess players in the world. He was the foremost figure amongst the
hypermoderns
and wrote a very influential book on chess theory:
My System
(1925?1927). Nimzowitsch's seminal work
Chess Praxis
, originally published in German in 1929, was purchased by a pre-teen and future World Champion
Tigran Petrosian
and was to have a great influence on his development as a chess player.
[1]
Life
[
edit
]
Born in
Riga
, then part of the
Russian Empire
, the Jewish
Yiddish
-speaking Nimzowitsch came from a wealthy family, where he learned
chess
from his father Shaya Abramovich Nimzowitsch (1860,
Pinsk
? 1918), who was a timber merchant. By 1897, the family lived in
Dvinsk
.
[2]
Mother's name: Esphir Nohumovna Nimzowitsch (born Rabinovich, 1865,
Polotsk
? 1937), sister ? Tsilya-Kreyna Pevzner, brothers Yakov, Osey and Benno. In 1904, he travelled to Berlin to study
philosophy
, but set aside his studies soon and began a career as a professional chess player that same year. He won his first international tournament at Munich 1906.
[3]
Then, he tied for first with
Alexander Alekhine
at Saint Petersburg 1913/14 (the eighth
All-Russian Masters' Tournament
).
[4]
During the 1917
Russian Revolution
, Nimzowitsch was in the
Baltic
war zone. He escaped being drafted into one of the armies by feigning madness, insisting that a fly was on his head. He then escaped to Berlin, and gave his first name as Arnold, possibly to avoid anti-Semitic persecution.
[5]
Nimzowitsch eventually moved to
Copenhagen
in 1922,
[6]
where he lived for the rest of his life in one small rented room.
[7]
In Copenhagen, he won the
Nordic Championship
twice, in 1924 and in 1934. He obtained Danish citizenship and lived in Denmark until his death in 1935.
Chess career
[
edit
]
The height of Nimzowitsch's career was the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Chessmetrics
places him as the third best player in the world from 1927 to 1931, behind
Alexander Alekhine
and
Jose Capablanca
.
[8]
His most notable successes were first-place finishes at
Copenhagen
1923,
Marienbad
1925,
Dresden
1926,
Hanover
1926, the
Carlsbad 1929 chess tournament
, and second place behind Alekhine at the
San Remo 1930 chess tournament
. Nimzowitsch never developed a knack for match play, though; his best match success was a draw with Alekhine, but the match consisted of only two games and took place in 1914, thirteen years before Alekhine became world champion.
Nimzowitsch never beat Capablanca (+0?5=6), but fared better against Alekhine (+3?9=9). He even beat Alekhine with the
black pieces
, in their short 1914 match at
St. Petersburg
. One of Nimzowitsch's most famous games is his celebrated
immortal zugzwang game
against
Samisch
at
Copenhagen
1923. Another game on this theme is his win over Paul Johner at
Dresden
1926. When in form, Nimzowitsch was very dangerous with the black pieces, scoring many fine wins over top players.
Legacy
[
edit
]
Nimzowitsch is considered one of the most important players and writers in chess history. His works influenced numerous other players, including
Savielly Tartakower
,
Milan Vidmar
,
Richard Reti
,
Akiba Rubinstein
,
Mikhail Botvinnik
,
Bent Larsen
,
Viktor Korchnoi
and
Tigran Petrosian
, and his influence is still felt today.
He wrote three books on chess strategy:
Mein System
(My System)
, 1925;
Die Praxis meines Systems (The Practice of My System)
, 1929, commonly known as
Chess Praxis
; and
Die Blockade
(
The Blockade
), 1925, although much in this book is generally held to be a rehash of material already presented in
Mein System
.
Mein System
is considered to be one of the most influential chess books of all time.
[9]
It sets out Nimzowitsch's most important ideas, while his second most influential work,
Chess Praxis
, elaborates upon these ideas, adds a few new ones, and has immense value as a stimulating collection of Nimzowitsch's own games accompanied by his idiosyncratic, hyperbolic commentary which is often as entertaining as instructive.
Nimzowitsch's
chess theories
, when first propounded, flew in the face of widely held orthodoxies enunciated by the dominant theorist of the era,
Siegbert Tarrasch
, and his disciples. Tarrasch's rigid generalizations drew on the earlier work of
Wilhelm Steinitz
, and were upheld by Tarrasch's sharp tongue when dismissing the opinions of doubters. While the greatest players of the time, among them
Alekhine
,
Emanuel Lasker
and
Capablanca
, clearly did not allow their play to be hobbled by blind adherence to general concepts that the center had to be controlled by
pawns
, that development had to happen in support of this control, that rooks always belong on open files, that wing openings were unsound?core ideas of Tarrasch's chess philosophy as popularly understood?beginners were taught to think of these generalizations as unalterable principles.
Nimzowitsch supplemented many of the earlier simplistic assumptions about chess strategy by enunciating in his turn a further number of general concepts of defensive play aimed at achieving one's own goals by preventing realization of the opponent's plans. Notable in his "system" were concepts such as
overprotection
of pieces and pawns under attack, control of the center by pieces instead of pawns, blockading of opposing pieces (notably the
passed pawns
) and
prophylaxis
. His aforementioned game versus
Paul Johner
in 1926 (listed in the notable games below) is a great example of Nimzowitsch's concept of 'first restrain, then blockade and finally destroy'.
[10]
He manoeuvres the black queen from its starting point to h7 to form a part of king-side blockade along with the knight on f6 and h-pawn to stop any attacking threats from White. He was also a leading exponent of the
fianchetto
development of
bishops
. Perhaps most importantly, he formulated the terminology still in use for various complex chess strategies. Others had used these ideas in practice, but he was the first to present them systematically as a lexicon of themes accompanied by extensive taxonomical observations.
Raymond Keene
writes that Nimzowitsch "was one of the world's leading grandmasters for a period extending over a quarter of a century, and for some of that time he was the obvious challenger for the world championship. ... [He was also] a great and profound chess thinker second only to Steinitz, and his works ?
Die Blockade
,
My System
and
Chess Praxis
? established his reputation as one of the father figures of modern chess."
[11]
GM
Robert Byrne
called him "perhaps the most brilliant theoretician and teacher in the history of the game."
[12]
GM
Jan Hein Donner
called Nimzowitsch "a man who was too much of an artist to be able to prove he was right and who was regarded as something of a madman in his time. He would be understood only long after his death."
[13]
Many chess openings and variations are named after Nimzowitsch, the most famous being the
Nimzo-Indian Defence
(1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4) and the less often played
Nimzowitsch Defence
(1.e4 Nc6). Nimzowitsch biographer GM Raymond Keene and others have referred to 1.Nf3 followed by 2.b3 as the
Nimzowitsch?Larsen Attack
. Keene wrote a book about the opening with that title.
[14]
These openings all exemplify Nimzowitsch's ideas about controlling the center with pieces instead of pawns. He was also vital in the development of two important systems in the
French Defence
, the
Winawer Variation
(in some places called the Nimzowitsch Variation; its moves are 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4) and the
Advance Variation
(1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5). He also pioneered two provocative variations of the
Sicilian Defence
: the
Nimzowitsch Variation
, 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nf6, which invites 3.e5 Nd5 (similar to
Alekhine's Defence
) and 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 d5?! (the latter regarded as dubious today). International Master
John L. Watson
has dubbed the line 1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e6 3.Nf3 Bb4 the "Nimzo-English", employing this designation in Chapter 11 of his book
Mastering the Chess Openings, Volume 3
.
[15]
Personality
[
edit
]
There are many entertaining anecdotes regarding Nimzowitsch?some less savory than others. An article by Hans Kmoch and Fred Reinfeld entitled "Unconventional Surrender" on page 55 of the February 1950
Chess Review
tells of the "... example of Nimzowitsch, who ... once missed first prize in a tournament in Berlin by losing to Samisch, and when it became clear he was going to lose the game, Nimzowitsch stood up on the table and shouted, 'Gegen diesen Idioten muss ich verlieren!' ('I must lose to this idiot!')".
Nimzowitsch was annoyed by his opponents' smoking. A popular, but probably apocryphal, story is that once when an opponent laid an unlit cigar on the table, he complained to the tournament arbiters, "He is threatening to smoke, and as an old player you must know that the threat is stronger than the execution."
[16]
Nimzowitsch had lengthy and somewhat bitter dogmatic conflicts with Tarrasch over whose ideas constituted 'proper' chess.
Nimzowitsch's vanity and faith in his ideas of overprotection provoked
Hans Kmoch
to write a parody about him in February 1928 in the
Wiener Schachzeitung
. This consisted of a mock game
[17]
against the fictional player "Systemsson", supposedly played and annotated by Nimzowitsch himself. The annotations gleefully exaggerate the idea of overprotection, as well as asserting the true genius of the wondrous idea. Kmoch was in fact a great admirer of Nimzowitsch, and Nimzowitsch was amused at the effort.
[18]
Kmoch also wrote an article about his nine years with Nimzowitsch:
[5]
Nimzovich suffered from the delusion that he was unappreciated and that the reason was malice. All it took to make him blossom, as I later learned, was a little praise. His paranoia was most evident when he dined in company. He always thought he was served much smaller portions than everyone else. He didn't care about the actual amount but only about the imagined affront. I once suggested that he and I order what the other actually wanted and, when the food was served, exchange plates. After we had done so, he shook his head in disbelief, still thinking that he had received the smaller portion.
Nimzowitsch's colleague
Tartakower
observed of him, "He pretends to be crazy in order to drive us all crazy."
[5]
Death
[
edit
]
Although he had long suffered from heart trouble, his early death was unexpected; taken ill suddenly at the end of 1934, he lay bedridden for three months before dying of
pneumonia
.
[19]
He is buried in
Bispebjerg Cemetery
in Copenhagen.
[20]
Notable games
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Vasiliev, Vik L. (1974).
Tigran Petrosian: His Life and Games
. B. T. Barsford.
ISBN
9780713428186
.
- ^
Archival data are available at JewishGen.org. Surname is also in some documents written as N
e
mtsovich.
- ^
"The ultimate Nimzowitsch"
. Archived from
the original
on 10 July 2009
. Retrieved
2009-01-18
.
- ^
Alexey Popovsky.
"All-Russian Tournament- Peterburg 23.12.1913-17.1.1914"
.
Russian Chess Base
. Retrieved
23 January
2021
.
- ^
a
b
c
Kmoch, Hans
.
"Grandmasters I Have Known: Aaron Nimzovich"
(PDF).
Chesscafe.com
. Retrieved 2 March 2009.
(subscription required)
- ^
"Copenhagen Police Record: "Nimzowitsch, Aron, chess master, born 07-11-1886 in Riga, from 29-11-1922 living c/o Nielsen, Nansensgade 32, 1st floor, from 11-06-1923 at Missionshotellet, Løngangstræde 27, and from 28-06-1923 c/o Juul, Øster Farimagsgade 11, 2. floor"
. politietsregisterblade.dk
. Retrieved
31 August
2015
.
- ^
The Oxford Companion To Chess
, 2nd Ed. (1996), by
David Hooper
and
Kenneth Whyld
, p. 272
- ^
Chessmetrics Summary for 1925-35
Archived
2 May 2012 at the
Wayback Machine
,
Chessmetrics
web site, accessed 7 May 2007.
- ^
Jacob Aagaard
.
"Nimzowitsch for the 21st Century"
(PDF)
.
Chesscafe.com
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 9 October 2022.
(subscription required)
- ^
Burgess, Graham; Emms, John; Nunn, John (2010).
The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games
. London: Constable & Robinson Ltd. p. 143.
ISBN
978-1-84901-368-0
.
- ^
Raymond Keene,
Aron Nimzowitsch: A Reappraisal
, David McKay, 1974, p. 1.
ISBN
0-679-13040-3
.
- ^
Anthony Saidy
and
Norman Lessing
,
The World of Chess
, Random House, 1974, p. 161.
ISBN
0-394-48777-X
.
- ^
J. H. Donner,
The King: Chess Pieces
, New in Chess, 2006, p. 46.
ISBN
90-5691-171-6
.
- ^
Keene, Raymond (1977).
Nimzowitsch-Larsen attack : 1 b3
. London: Batsford.
ISBN
0-7134-0244-X
.
OCLC
16442689
.
- ^
Gambit Publications, 2008,
ISBN
978-1-904600-98-5
- ^
Edward Winter
,
A Nimzowitsch Story
. Retrieved on 2009-03-02.
- ^
Game and commentary
- ^
The full text of the parody is reprinted at
Chesscafe.com
and in Keene's biography on Nimzowitsch (Chapter "A parody by Hans Kmoch").
- ^
The Oxford Companion To Chess
, 2nd Ed. (1996), by
David Hooper
and
Kenneth Whyld
, p. 273
- ^
"Bispebjerg Cemetery (leaflet)"
(PDF)
.
Københavns Kommune
. Page 2 (uL-378)
. Retrieved
31 December
2022
.
- ^
"Friedrich Saemisch vs Aron Nimzowitsch"
.
Chessgames.com
. Chessgames Services LLC.
- ^
Winter, Edward (1997).
"Zugzwang"
.
Chess Notes
. Retrieved
13 March
2021
.
- ^
"Paul Johner vs Aron Nimzowitsch"
.
Chessgames.com
. Chessgames Services LLC.
- ^
"Efim Bogoljubov vs Aron Nimzowitsch"
.
Chessgames.com
. Chessgames Services LLC.
- ^
a
b
Rudolf Reinhardt, ed. (2013).
Aron Nimzowitsch 1928-1935 - Annotated Games & Essays
. New In Chess.
ISBN
978-9056914165
.
- ^
"Efim Bogoljubov vs Aron Nimzowitsch"
.
Chessgames.com
. Chessgames Services LLC.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Reinfeld, Fred
(1948).
Hypermodern Chess: As Developed in the Games of its Greatest Exponent Aron Nimzovich
. Dover Publications.
ISBN
0-486-20448-0
.
- Chernev, Irving (1995).
Twelve Great Chess Players and Their Best Games
. New York: Dover. pp. 1?13.
ISBN
0-486-28674-6
.
- Keene, Raymond (1974).
Aron Nimzowitsch: Master of Planning
. G. Bell and Sons.
ISBN
4-87187-846-5
.
External links
[
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]
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International
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