My System Chapter 1 - On the Centre and Development

Okay, let's try this - here's week one of the forum book club on My System by Aron Nimzowitsch. This week we're looking at Chapter 1: On The Centre and Development, so dig your copy out, have a look see what you think. Comment if there's anything you found particularly enlightening, or alternatively if anything doesn't make sense to you or feels like it's missing. Or anything you think is total rubbish, come to that.

Topics in the chapter:

1. By development we mean the strategic advance of the troops to the frontier line
2. A pawn move must not in itself be regarded as a developing move, but merely as an aid to development.
3. To be ahead in development is an ideal to be aimed at.
4. Exchange, with resulting gain of tempo.
5. Liquidation, with consequent development or disembarassment.
6. The centre and its demobilizing force. Some examples as to when and how the advance of the enemy center is to be met. On the maintenance and surrender of the center.
7. On pawn hunting in the opening. Usually a mistake. Exceptional case of center pawns.

Also recommended for consideration is: Illustrative Game 2, Teichmann-Nimzovitsch, Carlsbad 1911:
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1000708

My first thoughts:

"The advance of troops to the frontier line" seems like an odd way of putting it - it's not like we have to get every piece onto the fourth rank. Development as a "collective conception" is a nice way of putting it, though.

Sections 4 & 5 I still find weird. Is it as simple as "sometimes it's good to exchange stuff because it brings a piece to a square where you can gain a tempo on it. Sometimes it's good to exchange stuff because it avoids you having to move a piece and losing a tempo" or is he saying something deeper that I'm missing?

I find it really interesting that he talks about the pawn centre mostly in terms of mobility, and fighting against a "better" centre in terms of restraint. I think most introductory things would talk about the advantage of an e4 vs d6 centre for white in terms of having more capacity to stick pieces on active squares, right? Whereas Nimzowitsch, by my reading, is mostly concerned with whether white can get the e4 pawn rolling or whether black can restrain it and / or destroy it. This is definitely an interesting way of looking at it, although I'll hold fire on whether it's the most useful way of looking at it until I've tried putting it into practice more...

Found this blog entry with a number of articles on My System. Very interesting reading.

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/perspective-on-my-system-by-aron-nimzowitsch
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I'm thinking about what to say about the week one topic. So much to say...

"We shall begin with the center, which we propose to treat in the first place with the less experienced player in mind." - Nimzo

Because Nimzo wants to include in his audience those less experienced, he then gives a number of rules-of-thumb(ROT) that he knows have many exceptions.

Let's call the "less experienced" players; "beginners". They may have years of experience playing chess, but not in the theories of chess. Beginners may also be novices with little to no playing experience. We just assume they know the rules of chess.

Hence, as examples of the ROT, Nimzo says

"No, let each officer make one move only, and ... dig himself in." and
"Hence, as Lasker truly observers: in the opening one or two Pawn moves, not more." and
"By development is to be understood the strategic advance of the troops to the frontier line."

I look at that last as a ROT and definition combined; and not a really good definition of development. But how can one define development quickly to a beginner? A better attempt is given here:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chess_Strategy/Development and that is a paragraph.

And like every ROT, there are exceptions; many exceptions. For example, there are openings where a Bishop does not move at all and yet it is playing an important role in the position. Another exception to this ROT is the Ruy Lopez: Exchange Variation, where White moves his Bishop twice.

So he has to explain why a pawnless advance would not work - via a variation.

He has to explain why White can break the ROT in the Scandinavian Defense and play 2.exd5 even though White will also play 3.d4 and hence have made 3 pawn moves.

He gives several other opening variations that break the ROT, and he explains this by saying that gaining tempi results in the ideal of being ahead in development.

And if you have "embarrassed" yourself, by inferior moves, you can sometimes "liquidate" (aka exchange pieces), to disembarrassed yourself. :-)

The section 6 on maintenance and surrender of the center is the beginning of Nimzo's attack, and axe to grind, against the Classical School, especially Tarrasch, and their dogmatism regarding how one should fight for the center.

Diagram 10 is an example of Nimzo's attitude. He titles the diagram with "White has freedom, Black has pressure". Tarrasch would say White is better because of that freedom. Nimzo would disagree that White is better, though he says "The restraining process is not easy, ...".

Nimzo is trying to make a science of chess. One of his key ideas for that is the concepts of restraint and blockade can be applied throughout a chess game. Hence, he wants to apply those ideas to the fight in the center.

The pawn hunting section is interesting. I agree with Nimzo's idea there. However, how is a beginner to know if taking a center pawn can be done "without too great danger"? In my beginner course I have an example of Black taking the White e-pawn in a Ruy Lopez where it might be difficult for a beginner to know there was danger. See:

I'm not saying that the ROT are "bad". They are useful to a novice who wants to start playing chess immediately on learning the rules of chess. IMHO it should be emphasized to novices that there are many exceptions to these ROT.

In my tabia I talk about whether the ideas from the Schools of Chess should be taught to beginners and intermediate players at all. See
https://lichess.org/forum/team-jomegas-tabia/the-schools-of-chess?page=2#11

I have found that such players games are full of egregious tactical blunders and the root causes are

a) not having internalized piece movement/capture,
b) poor visualization,
c) the inability to create and maintain the attack/defense (A/D) network, and
d) a non disciplined move selection method.

Also playing too fast!

Nimzo is not going to address any of that, of course, because he is writing what he considers a scientific explanation of best chess play in theory.

Hey Dave,

What translation are you guys using?

My copy is an English translation, reprinted May, 1974 by David McKay Company. Descriptive notation.

Is it still ok to just link the free PDF copy? It was in the past, for older publications like this and Chess Fundamentals.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxILtRDcxKmeMWU1MmNhYzMtMmM3Yy00Yzk0LTk0YzctYmQyOGQ3MTYwYTgy/view?hl=it

I have some game examples that could be pertinent to later chapters. As far as the center, my style seems to have always revolved around developing a strong central influence / control, then expanding from there, depending on what the opponent does. I guess I think about it, internally somehow, but I'm not really conscious of doing so. Probably one of the few things, or only thing about chess, that seems to come naturally for me. I'm sure I read it in a book at some point very early, but by the time I discovered Nimzovich, I was ready to speed past that.

I will review the chapter a little later, and see if I can comment on the issues raised in #2

#4 - great post, thanks!

If I wanted to sum up development in a sentence, I'd say that it's getting to a position where all of your major and minor pieces are contributing actively to the game. This is kind of riffing on Nimzovich's observation that it's a collective condition rather than an individual one, but allowing that not every piece has to move forward aggressively - a bishop can be doing a useful job from c1, say, but if it's preventing the queen's rook from doing anything useful then you'll need to address that before you can say you're done with development.

Agree largely on "rules of thumb for beginners" - it always sort of annoys me when people don't clarify "this is normally good advice for a beginner to follow" vs "this is a universal general principle".

#5 - I've got the "21st Century Edition" edited by Lou Hays, but anything is good.

Ok, I made it through the first 5 sections.....not sure I can handle any more today.  I'm going to play some, get around to analyzing some old games, and do a few puzzles.

Wow, honestly I found sections 4 and 5 difficult to follow, and even with a board out I wasn't able to digest his examples very well*.  

In the opening I try to focus on piece activity, scope, influence on key squares.  At the start of the game certainly the center is THE most key area.  But later as the game develops play tends to evolve and shift in focus, IE, to a Kingside or queenside initiative, or expanding that initial central influence straight down the board. 

*Maybe it's because I just don't play those classic open games that he used for his examples.....I tend to play semi -open setups whether with white or black, and by the time the game  does open up, the gains and losses of tempi take place in rather different ways than in the opening.