An opening course for Black (ECO E20-E59)
The bishop comes to b4 and offers itself for White's knight. Take the trade and White is left with pawns on c3 and c4 that no pawn can defend, which is the target for the rest of the game. The Nimzo only appears when White plays 3.Nc3; against 3.Nf3 or 3.g3 you need a second defence, so treat this as one half of a repertoire.
This course is part of your daily work.
The point of ...Bb4 is the exchange, not the pin. Once White recaptures with the b-pawn, c3 and c4 stand on a file where no pawn can ever defend them. The standard attack is ...b6, ...Ba6 and ...Nc6-a5, three pieces aimed at c4, and White has one bishop to hold it with.
In the Hübner setup Black follows the trade with ...d6 and ...e5 and locks the position. Bishops need open lines and the doubled c-pawns give White no pawn break on the queenside to open them, so the two knights end up the better minor pieces.
There is no single Black setup here. Against 4.e3, 4.Qc2 and 4.g3, castle or hit d4 with ...c5 and wait. Against 4.Bg5 and 4.Qb3, play ...c5 immediately: the bishop on g5 has nothing defending it, and the queen on b3 has stopped covering e4. Against 4.f3, answer in the centre with ...d5, because a pawn on f3 is not developing anything.
Most Nimzo positions are closed or half-closed, and the plans repeat: the c-file, the blockade, the ...e5 or ...c5 break. If you lose the thread of a variation, the general rules will usually still find you a reasonable move, which is not true of every defence to 1.d4.
Learning order, one scoresheet per chapter. The coach serves review one line a day; enter any line directly when you want it now.
These three lines all end with a White pawn on c3 and a White pawn on c4, and neither of them can ever be defended by another pawn. Everything Black does afterwards points at that.
4.Qc2, 4.Nf3 and 5.Ne2 all say the same thing: you may have the exchange on c3, but the b-pawn will not recapture. Black's compensation is time, because those moves are slow.
4.Bg5 pins the knight before White has developed anything else. It is the most provocative fourth move on the board, and both of these lines start from the same reply.
Three ways of not committing. Each one gives something up, and in each case the thing given up is concrete enough to aim at from move four.
Club games that started in the Nimzo-Indian Defence produced these tactics, and you solve every one from Black's side, the seat you actually sit in. Difficulty follows your solving, the same as the puzzle room.
The Nimzo-Indian Defence is the chess opening that begins 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4, and it is filed under ECO E20-E59. This course teaches it from Black's side in 12 drills across 4 chapters, with a coach note on the moves that need one, every position checked with Stockfish at depth 20, and every plan credited to the author who wrote it down.
Lines you will drill
Theory credited to
2 branches are deliberately not drilled here, and the course records which and why rather than leaving the gap silent.
Questions
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