David Vigorito "Nimzo Indian"

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The Nimzo-Indian is Black's most respected answer to 1.d4 and is immensely popular at all levels, from club championship to world championship. In fact, the reputation of the Nimzo is so high that some players prefer simply to avoid it and give up all hopes of an opening advantage. American International Master David Vigorito shows that this negative approach is unnecessary. Challenging the Nimzo-Indian provides detailed coverage of White's most critical try, 4.Qc2. There is sufficient detail for the reader to build a dangerous repertoire with either colour. The chess is certainly at a high level, but Vigorito's logical approach and clear conclusions means that readers can easily grasp the concepts while less experienced players can play through the high-quality games which are comprehensively explained. How this book came to be... In the late 1990s I was primarily a 1.d4 player. I preferred many of the most principled opening lines, such as the 4.Qc2 Nimzo-Indian, the 8.Rb1 Griinfeld, and the Bayonet Attack of the Kings Indian. Information was not as readily available back then, however, and as I was not keeping up with theoretical developments, I soon made a switch. Vladimir Kramnik was frequently playing 1.Nf3 in those days, and I realized I could still play many 1.d4 openings by employing this move order. 1.Nf3 worked quite well against certain players. Many people were not prepared for the move and it allowed me to use various move-order tricks both in queen's pawn openings and certain lines of the English Opening. Essentially, I was able to achieve my IM title with very little study by employing 1.Nf3 against untitled players. In early 2005 the deficiencies of 1.Nf3 started to sink in. If Black plays classical systems such as the Queen's Gambit Accepted, the Queen's Gambit Declined, the Slav, and the Nimzo/ Queen's Indian, then 1.Nf3 has left White with limited options. There are also many lines of the Symmetrical English that are quite satisfactory for Black. Not surprisingly, strong players were hardly taken aback by 1.Nf3 and they would often respond 1...d5. After 2.d4 Nf6 3.c4 Black has much less to worry about than after a "pure" 1.d4 move order. For example, in the Queen's Gambit Accepted, one of White's sharpest tries is 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.e4. In the Queen's Gambit Declined, the Exchange Variation is one of White's most principled tries, and the most dangerous move-order for Black is 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5. The delay in development of White's king's knight makes it more difficult for Black to find a post for his c8-bishop, and White may also play Nge2 at some point, intending f2-f3. So what does all this have to do with the 4.Qc2 Nimzo-Indian? Well, if you want to play 1.d4, then one of the first things you must ask yourself is "What to do about the Nimzo?" If you play 3.Nf3 then Black will have several solid options, such as 3...d5 leading again to various Queen's Gambits, the Queens Indian 3...b6, and the Bogo-Indian 3...Bb4+. Black can also play 3...c5, as after 4.d5 d6 5.Nc3 exd5 6.cxd5 g6 Black has avoided several of White's more dangerous systems, again because of the early development of White's knight to f3. So let's just allow the Nimzo! I am well aware that most Nimzo-Indian players are happy to see 3.Nc3 because the Nimzo-Indian is generally more interesting than the Queen's Gambit Declined or the Queen's Indian. The same could be said about 3.e4 in the Queen's Gambit Accepted: it is an interesting line. For a while it seemed to me that White should not allow Black to play their favourite systems. Then it occurred to me that the Nimzo-Indian is popular because it is a dynamic and rich opening. Why would I want to avoid that? If I have White, I should strive for the maximum advantage out of the opening. I mean, how much can one really get against the Lasker or Tartakower variations of the Queen's Gambit Declined? Please allow me to return once again to 2005.1 realized that I must start preparing to dump 1.Nf3 in favour of 1 .d4. In the summer I qualified to play in the U.S. Closed Championship and I was determined to not only play 1 .d4, but also to avoid losing with White. I did not have such a great tournament, but I did achieve my humble goals. I felt that by playing 1.Nf3 against grandmasters I was already conceding my chances for not only an advantage, but an interesting game. I am aware that this is a bit of an overstatement, but I do feel that by only playing 1.Nf3 I was missing out on a lot of interesting chess. Once I had decided that I must return to 1.d4, I quickly decided to play the Nimzo-Indian with White. 4.Qc2 had always been my favourite line. White avoids doubled pawns and prepares 5.a3 to get the bishop pair. 4.Qc2 has also been a consistent choice of grandmasters for two decades. There are many typical themes in the 4.Qc2 Nimzo-Indian, such as White's bishop pair, Black's lead in development, etc. Instead of writing a long introduction demonstrating these themes, I have decided to let the games within the book illustrate the themes. I have also chosen not to dwell on the history of the line. This has all been covered before, and although 4.Qc2 is sometimes referred to as the "Capablanca Variation" I do not see how this is relevant to today's tournament players. If a player wants to study the 4.Qc2 Nimzo-Indian, he should look at the modern experts on the line. There are many, and the list has some pretty good players: Kramnik, Kasparov, Karpov (isn't that enough already!?), Ivan Sokolov, Mikhail Gurevich, Seirawan, and Bareev are its greatest exponents, while players such as Topalov, Anand, Shirov, Ivanchuk, Van Wely, Aronian, Gelfand, Korchnoi, Dreev, Kiril Georgiev, Khalifman, Beliavsky, Onischuk, Sasikiran, Lautier, Shipov, and Nakamura have also often played it. Actually, the only elite grandmasters who have not employed 4.Qc2 are "1.e4 - only" players such as Svidler and Leko. I have a reasonable chess library, so I started to scan my bookshelves looking for a recent work on 4.Qc2. To my surprise, there was very little to look at. Dlugy and Ivan Sokolov are both strong grandmasters and big experts on 4.Qc2 and they both wrote books on the opening. However, Dlugy's book was written in 1990 and Sokolov's is from 1995. Despite their value, these books were clearly dated. Sokolov's 1997 ECO monograph has tons of information. It is still useful, especially for old lines that have seen few developments. Unfortunately this book has zero prose, in addition to being rather out of date. The most recent book I could find was from 2001 and it was written by Lalic. This book had some good things in it as well, but it really only covered lines that were fashionable and it ignored some major variations completely. By 2005, the lines it covered were not so fashionable, so I had very little to go on. The bulk of what had been written in the last few years on 4.Qc2 had actually been written for Black. The Nimzo-Indian is a very popular opening, so in a way this was not so surprising. Although many of these books were quite good, they were of limited use to me because they only covered certain variations and were often biased towards Black. Many modern professionals do not use chess books too much, especially the younger generation. They have been raised on computers and prefer to use large databases for their research. I, for one, have always loved chess books. The information has been sorted, there are explanations, and I can study chess almost anywhere. Honestly, I was very surprised that there was so little current literature on 4.Qc2, especially considering that it is the most popular variation against the most popular Black defence to 1.d4. Once I realized that I would have to do my 4.Qc2 Nimzo-Indian study "on my own", it occurred to me that I might want to write it all down. In the autumn of 2005, I was talking to Jacob Aagaard and I told him about my project. I was basically writing this book for myself, but because of the lack of 4.Qc2 literature on the market, I thought there may be others like me who may want to learn more about this interesting opening. The result is this book. Many people were a great help to me while I was writing this book. First I would like to thank Jacob Aagaard for giving me the opportunity to write it and helping me with the format of the book. He also displayed tremendous patience with my computer "skills", especially at the outset of the project. I would also like to thank Vasik Rajlich for keeping me updated with the latest versions of his program Rybka (versions 2.1 and 2.2), which were used along with Fritz 9 to check many complicated variations. Many thanks go out to John Shaw, John Donaldson, Joe Fang, and especially Jim Rizzitano and Dean Ippolito for their help at various stages in the preparation of this work.

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