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The Moment of Zuke:
Critical Positions and
Pivotal Decisions for
Colle System Players

by David Rudel
author of Zuke 'Em

7 modules written just for Colle System Players. Over 150 practice problems accompany lessons written in Rudel's crystal-clear, inimitable style

Thematic Lessons
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Reviews

Starting Out: The Nimzo-Indian

Reviewed by Bill Whited

9/15/02

Starting Out: The Nimzo-Indian, by GM Chris Ward (Everyman, 2002). 176 pp.

The Starting Out Series of opening books has a very ambitious aim of both teaching the theory and practice of an opening while teaching basic chess fundamentals at the same time. To a very large extent, they succeed admirably. When I was starting to play serious chess over 30 years ago, the number of available books was quite limited in comparison to today. Typically, stronger players would recommend Modern Chess Openings for opening theory, My System by Aaron Nimzowitsch for the game, Basic Chess Endings by Rueben Fine for the endings, and Pawn Power in Chess by Hans Kmoch for the study of pawn play. Everybody had his or her favorite game collections as well. Most players of average strength might know a given opening seven or eight moves deep and after that they played on their own. While there have always been vast quantities of chess literature, much of it was not translated into English and was unavailable to much of the chess reading public.

All this changed with the ascendancy of Bobby Fisher and the entry into competitive chess of thousands of players who had never played in a chess tournament in their lives before. Publishers such as Batsford began to introduce specialized books on the opening, players began to learn and practice many complicated variations, and players who only a few years before might have known only a few moves in a given opening, were now going a dozen or more moves deep into their chosen lines. The problem was that they didn’t know how to play the position once they got there. The function of an opening is to give you a playable middle game as White or Black. Ideally as Black you should have equal chances and as White a slight pull as befits the player with the first move. Winning out of the opening is a bonus but not usually a realizable goal.

In the Starting Out series, the author is seeking to teach the reader how to play the chosen opening and why it is played a particular way. Starting right from the introduction, Chris Ward illustrates principle after principle of opening play, adds in tips and warnings, and explains to the reader why a given variation of the Nimzo-Indian is played a particular way and what the goals and objectives of the opening are, as well as those of the individual variations. Since he has done an excellent job of writing from both sides of the opening, the book serves as a valuable reference for people who want to play the White side as well as the Black side of the Nimzo-Indian.

The book covers the Rubenstein Variation (4.e3), The Classical (4.Qc2), 4. Nf3 (too generic to be given a name apparently), The Samisch (4.a3), and The Leningrad (4.Bg5). Ward also includes a section on Odds and Ends (4.g4, 4.Qb3, 4.Bd2). The book includes numerous diagrams and illustrative games that are extremely helpful when you are trying to learn an opening, and even more important, get a feeling for the middlegames and endings that it produces. Ward presents his ideas in a clear and direct fashion, making the book easy to follow for anyone wishing to learn this powerful defense.

If you are looking for a defense to 1.d4 and feel overwhelmed by the complexities of the King’s Indian and the Queen’s Gambit Declined, take a look at the Nimzo-Indian. The only drawback is that many players of the White pieces so dislike playing against it, that they will avoid it with Nf3 or g3, but both of those replies make Black’s defensive task somewhat easier with the Queen’s Indian or one of the defenses to the Catalan. In general, I thought the book was excellent, but in keeping with other observations made here with regard to other books in the series, an index of variations would be a welcome addition. That caveat aside, I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn this opening.