This DVD provides everything you need to know to play one of the most classical openings with Black, the Nimzo-Indian, arising after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4. Nearly every World Championship match and top tournament features this opening. It is a well trusted “lifetime” choice for players all around the globe. Former FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov gives you both the concrete variations — with many novelties to catch your opponent by surprise — and the positional nuances to enhance your understanding of the opening and of the game in general.
Content:
Almost 300 000 engine games as well as 30 000 games culled from the Mega 2019 plus the Correspondence Database 2018 constitute the basis for the Nimzo-Indian Powerbook 2019. If you want to play for a win with Black against 1.d4 then hardly any opening is as well suited to the purpose as the Nimzo-Indian: it is rare for symmetrical positions to arise and not much is exchanged, instead of that exciting distributions of material often appear on your board. White requires patience. To be sure he can frequently obtain the bishop pair, but that does not necessarily promise him an advantage.
The Nimzo-Indian Powerbook 2019 is based on almost 300 000 games from the Engine Room and a good 30 000 played by human beings, coming to a total of over 327 000 games. The threshold for players is Elo 2450, but generally speaking the average is in the 2550-2600 range. Thus the Powerbook also offers reliable statistics in deep sub-variations.
The move 4.e3 still accounts for the greatest number of games. The position in the following diagram is then very frequently reached:
Now the older 7...Nc6 can lay claim to very good statistics, but if one goes deeper into the tree structure White just manages to get an edge in some branches. But the alternative 7...dxc4 8.Bxc4, and then either 8...Nbd7 or 8...cxd4 should reliably provide a level game.
The threshold for selecting games for the database was a high one — the average Elo of games being over 2550 points. There are many world-class Nimzo-Indian specialists, but all of them have played the opening with both colours. World champion Magnus Carlsen has 96 games in it, and in 53 of them he was playing White. As is the case in the Mega Database as a whole, Viktor Korchnoi has the largest number of games in the Nimzo-Indian Powerbase — namely 271, of which 130 are with Black!
The database shows the games list. By double-clicking on a game, the game is loaded. By clicking on the ‘Players’ you can sort the list by frequency of play. This way you can examine the games of Korchnoi or Carlsen, both big practitioners of this opening!
Games can be replayed and examined with an engine or with a Powerbook.
Grandmaster Nihal Sarin has signed a copy of the Opening Encyclopaedia 2019 and of the Komodo Chess 13 DVD for us. Anybody who buys the Nimzo-Indian bundle has the chance to win either one of these signed DVDs! With almost 7,000 opening surveys, the Encyclopaedia has tons of opening material to be analysed, while Komodo Chess 13 is still one of the most powerful chess engines out there. Good luck!
...will be announced next week with the winners of the Nihal Sarin and Gukesh D DVDs! (Cat video included)
