Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 07:30:59 07/25/03
Go up one level in this thread
Dear Readers, I was wondering when somebody would mention Nimzovich's "My System." I think this is a controvercial choice. Many people love the book and recommend it highly. Others, including myself, don't like it at all. "My System" is largely Nimzovich's thoughts and personal agenda favoring "Hypermodern Chess" over the standard "Classical" approach of Steinitz, Tarrasch, and Capablanca. In the book, Nimzovich went to great extremes to advocate certain concepts that most modern players have long since rejected or minimized (e.g. blockade, overprotection, prophylaxis, etc.). Now that's not to say that modern players don't use some of Nimzovich's strategies. We all use the concepts of blockade and prophylaxis and somethimes (although rarely) even overprotection. But Nimzovich over-emphasized these hypermodern themes far beyond the level of practicality. I personally found that trying to apply the concepts gleaned from "My System" to my chess probably hurt my chess for several years. Others have said the same thing. Also Nimzovich was a poor communicator and the English translations that I've seen used archaic expressions. In short, the texts in English were poorly communicated. So my suggestion is that unless you wish to follow a "hypermodern" approach to your chess, then forget about "My System." Instead, there are far better books on the market from Watson, Silman, and Yermolinsky that will genuinely help your chess abilities, rather than hurt you. They also have pointed out how much of what Nimzovich wrote has been subsequently rejected or corrected, so one only uses his concepts in certain positions, rather than at all times. They are also much better communicators in English than the English translations of Nimzovich. The modern approach now is to calculate first and then then apply concepts secondarily. This is a broad oversimplification, but specific calculation should be given priority over broad and general concepts. Sure, we use some general concepts to help guide and minimize what we calculate (we are not computers so we need to keep our calculations qualitative and not quantitative), but the emphasis must be on calculations and then using various concepts to help us evaluation the terminal positions. Yermolinsky, for example, gave many examples where the standard concepts of what to do in various positions would have lead to disaster. Instead, the correct solutions are found by calculations. Now...if only I could practise what I preach. All the best, Stephen
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.