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Nimzo: Heroes and Slayers

Who always wins with the Nimzo-Indian? Who always beats the Nimzo-Indian?

Bring on the heroes and slayers!

Aron Nimzowitch

The inventor of the opening produced early strategical masterpieces against Matisons and Johner. According to Megabase 99, Nimzowitch's score with the Nimzo was +11=9-8 (55%)

 

Simplicity: Giving the impression of playing vitaully on auto-pilot, Nimzowitch produces another one of those unmistakable gems.

Anatoly Karpov

Karpov has favoured the Nimzo from birth and Megabase 99 contains no less than 113 Nimzo games from the living legend. His score is 42 wins, 52 draws and 19 losses. Somewhat surprisingly his rating performance is only 2670 (with his average rating during those games being 2725).


Light Square Domination

Karpov has made this line his own, and has scored very well with it. He tends to play these typical Isolated Queen's Pawn (IQP) positions very well.

A Missed Oppurtunity: A model game from Karpov up to a point, but on closer inspection there's one glaring hole. Fortunately for the great man, Onischuk was not quite on the ball, and after this missed chance normal service is resumed.

Garry Kasparov

Kasparov has only used the Nimzo fleetingly, with Megabase 99 noting a +5=3-2 record for the World Champion. His record against the Nimzo is quite awesome. Megabase 99 show 36 wins, 23 draws and only l loss ( and this was way back in 1979). This gives a percentage score of 79% and a rating performance of 2828 (when his average rating was 2750). Kasparov's main two weapons against the Nimzo remain the Classical (4 Qc2) and the Flexible Variation 4 Nf3.

In for a penny: Characteristically Kasparov opts for the most complicated line. Black tries to show the down side of Qc2, in that the d4 pawn now lacks protection. Kasparov isn't slow in taking the challenge (or the pawn!)

Ivan Sokolov

Ivan Sokolov The author of "The Classical Nimzo-Indian" has 107 games as White against the Nimzo, according to Megabase 99. His score is +47, =48, -18 (64%), with a rating performance of 2645 (average rating 2607).

Collapse of the Nervous System: A rather bizarre game in which the World Champion was strangely out of sorts after forgetting his home analysis. Sokolov deserves credit, however, for his brutal demoliton down the g-file.

Other Historic Games

Botvinnik's Immortal Game: In the recent "The Mammoth Book of World's Greatest Chess Games" the following game was voted one of the top two games of chess ever played.

The Sucker Punch: Geller decides to transpose to the ambitious Saemisch variation, which could have also arisen via the move-order 4 a3 Bxc3+ 5 bxc3 c5 6 e3.