An instructive game with Daniel Naroditsky in a 5 minute blitz game

Hi all

(Please excuse the usual tongue-in-cheek - Daniel Naroditsky would no doubt thrash me 100 in 100 games nowadays! - also he is a superb teacher, streamer, and great guy overall - one of my favorite GM streamers nowadays in fact! In fact, I think I had a bit of luck on the day with the unusual opening sequence)

It is good to try and beat Grandmasters when they are tiny little children! Just in their evolution stage is best. Before they become giants of tactics and positional play. This game was way back on August 24th, 2009 - 4 days before my birthday - so great present here from my then "FM" opponent later to become a Grandmaster :

https://youtu.be/Z539q6ZoiBQ

(Check out my Scalps playlist for other games: https://kingscrusher.tv/scalpalerts )

Bxc3 in the opening was a bit of a controversial decision. It is a kind of Nimzo Indian with extra dark square weaknesses :

White does have now a dark square bishop without a counterpart, and I do have some dark square weaknesses:

Later though, things don't seem so clear:

Black seems to have some semi-open f-file pressure and a nice f4 outpost square. White's dark square bishop doesn't seem very happy within this pawn structure.

White soon gives up the bishop pair, and it is time to think like Nimzovich or Petrosian - the key question stats to become:

"How can I reduce the opponent's counterplay?"

This seemed to be the concern of all those 2500+ Russian players who played in the Lloyds bank masters in the 1980s who could crush most IMS and GMs quite easily nowadays - but they could not concern themselves with FIDE titles. When they came to crush the English bunnies, it could be heard "No counterplay" in the post-mortems when the tactical British players were mostly taken down. Hordes of 2500 rated players with no title - no joke! Having no counterplay for a 10-hour game is not particularly amusing!

Back to the story

Putting my Nimzovich hat on, I "put myself beyond defeat on the Queenside". White's semi-open file tamed, I could then work on my strong point e5 square:

"Die Blockade!" as Nimzovich saids :

Now there is a variation of "Restrain, Blockade Destroy" which is more "war - ending". I like to call it:

"Restrain, Blockade, and crush the opponent's king (to end the war!)"

Check out also this example classic Nimzovich game:

https://youtu.be/iTcOOUchCTc

Back to the story

Things are gearing up nicely for the g4 pawn break. It is great to think there is also an element of positional play pawn undermining as well as trying to attack the opponent's king. But also observe how White's bishop is locked within its own pawn chain. The value of blockade is increased in importance here, as White's pieces are not as worrisome as they could be.

Taking control of h-file now:

Final position

There are those players who don't seem to appreciate Aron Nimzovich that greatly and maybe have not read "My System" let alone "Chess Praxis" or "Die Blockade!". Some feel perhaps that "Overprotection" is simply putting pieces in the center - and not a deeper principle of prophylaxis in the wider sense of positional "security". "Security" to disable the opponent's pawn breaks such as f6 which would otherwise liberate their pieces. Overprotection generally should be against a strong square in the center such as e5 - which does of course mean one's pieces are naturally centralised. But the motive of dissuading pawn breaks such as f6 also then has implications for counterplay removal.

In my view, "Blockade", "Prophylaxis" and "Overprotection" are all critical strategic tools to minimise the opponent's counterplay and "put yourself beyond defeat". Now this could be just to make sure you don't lose - like Petrosian perhaps used it mainly for. But you can also extend that to be like Karpov - who himself declared his style like Petrosian but playing for a win!

For me Nimzovich who later influenced Petrosian, who later influenced Karpov all carried the message of "The Art of War" :

"Put yourself beyond defeat before going onto the attack".

You could say that Nimzovich's restrain, blockade strategy is "putting yourself beyond defeat". At least in many games Nimzovich has proven a lockdown of Q-side operations of the opponent basically giving a free-hand then attacking the K-side. Such games can be viewed often as "one-way". You could also see it as a kind of "professional" trying to reduce the element of luck which would be generated by the opponent's having counterplay.

The positional play has been used to disable the opponent, reducing counterplay, and giving the "green light" to then attack them on the Kingside without fear of counterplay. Fischer has also played in such a manner, for example, his crushing blitz win vs Korchnoi here:

https://youtu.be/nufoi07QioE

You can see Bobby Fischer has embraced the idea of locking the Queenside here before launching his attack.

Petrosian apparently was able to afford "Chess Praxis" by Nimzovich and that is why you can see the Nimzovichian influence in Petrosian's play who I am currently studying. So I thought this game was kind of topical for such prophylaxis play - as a prelude to attacking chess.

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Takeaway points

• "Put yourself beyond defeat before going onto the attack" seems to have great application in chess
• Reducing an opponent's counterplay is good before going onto the attack sometimes
• Nimzovich "restrain, blockade" can branch into "Destroy (a pawn maybe" or "Crush the opponent's king" - choose either that is more effective to your exact position!
• For me it seems as though Nimzovich himself studied the "Art of War" - and the idea of the good fighter putting themselves beyond defeat seems to translate very well to the chessboard battle arena!

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Hope you enjoyed this blog :). Any likes and follows are really appreciated. Also, I also have some interesting chess courses at https://kingscrusher.tv/chesscourses to check out.

Cheers, K