My System Chapter 4 - The Passed Pawn

There is another book also that Nimzo wrote called Blockade ... very thought provoking also .

#11
"The blockade" is an earlier pamphlet by Nimzovich but the ideas are refrased in "My System". There is the later "Chess Praxis" which contains games of Nimzovich to illustrate "My System". Nimzovich also wrote a tournament book about "Carlsbad 1929" which he won before Capablanca, Spielmann, Rubinstein... mainly to assert his claim that he had a divine right to challenge Alekhine for the World Championship title.

#10
References to pages and diagrams are a bit confusing, as there are different in different editions of "My System"
For reference, here is the Nimzovich-Rubinstein game

#10
With reference to the position #12:
41...Rh6 42 Bd4+ Kxb5 43 Ke3 Re6+

and now
A) 44 Kf4 Re4+ 45 Kf3 Ka4 46 Bf6 Kb3 47 Bh8 Kc2 48 Bd4 Kd3 49 Bf6 Kd2 50 Bh8 Ke1 51 Bf6 Re2 52 Bd4 Rd2 53 Bb6 Rd6 54 Bc7 Rd3+ 55 Kf4 Kxf2 56 Bb6+ Kg2 57 Kxf5 Rxb3 0:1
B) 44 Kf3 Ka4 45 Bh8 Re4 46 Kg2 Re2 47 Kf3 Rc2 48 Ke3 Kb3 49 f3 Rxc3+ 50 Kf4 Rd3 51 g4 fxg4 0:1
C) 44 Kd2 I think this draws as the black king cannot invade

#10 - re diagram 57. I still find the idea of "turning movements" etc a bit tricky, so I might be missing something here, but I think the point is that while this is a position that requires a bit of calculation rather than just "obviously Kc7 because of this principle", the idea that (arguably) makes the calculation more intuitive is the idea of blockade and turning movement - black allows c3 and cxb4, but can prevent white's king from protecting the pawn by because he can blockade all of the defending squares except the one that the king has ended up on, and then snaffle the pawn when the defending king is forced to break contact.

Talking about "the opposition" here doesn't work, because the pawn on d5 means that the usual formula about kings facing off against each other doesn't apply. (This is where "corresponding squares" comes in, right?)

Re @jomega and @dboing's comments on writing style - it's interesting that Nimzovitsch's writing style is one of the things that a lot of people love about My System and an equal number of people really dislike.

I have to admit that I come down on the "dislike" side a lot of the time. I feel like I'd find the book a lot more intuitive if it'd had a fairly brutal editor - "first state the principle clearly, then show the examples, maybe keep the catchy little phrase but drop the extended metaphor, keep the historical notes for the introduction" - but I'm sure that a lot of people would consider this to be blasphemy and a sign of a basic lack of moral fibre on my part. The stuff about the opposition is a good example though - it seems to me to be genuinely harder than it needs to be to work out exactly what he means by the "turning movement" and the "enveloping attack" and exactly what the thought process is that he intends to supersede "the opposition" with...

I responded once with also interesting is Blockade a small book by Nimzo which I owned & read many years ago ... There is independant material there & i also will mention Nimzo wrote How I became a GM another thought -provoking book . I will metion that as far as improving one's play books are needed by the modern player of today but there are many other methods now of improving including videos lectures & online training materials . I can help most with recomendations but so many new methods exist .