In my post on November 9, I talked about my aversion to giving lectures on openings, because I think most people study openings too much. However, I just recorded the last lecture in my series on the Two Knights Defense, and I have to say I really enjoyed doing the research for it. I lectured about a line that has always been a problem for me, called the Modern Variation. It begins 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d4 ed 5. e5 d5 6. Bb4, reaching the position below:
I’ve never really liked the positions Black gets out of this, and it wasn’t until I worked on this lecture that I figured out why. It’s because White can play in pure Nimzovichian style, blockading the position and only then, after Black is completely tied up, launching an attack on the kingside. Nimzovich’s approach to chess was very much like a spider’s approach to killing a fly. The spider could never hope to move as fast as a fly, so first he catches him in a web, and then he wraps him up good and tight so that he can’t move. Only then does he poison the fly and eat his meal.
I subtitled my lecture “The Nimzo-Two-Knights” to emphasize how much White’s strategy owes to Nimzovich. If you want to know what I recommend doing about it as Black, you’ll have to listen to my lecture. Basically, though, if you’re a fly, you have two strategies.
- Don’t fly into the spider’s web in the first place.
- Draw out all of the spider’s venom so that even after he wraps you up, he can’t kill you.
In my lecture I present one subvariation of each type. Which strategy would you prefer?
