Nimzo–Larsen Attack Chess Opening with FIDE CM Kingscrusher

Nimzo–Larsen Attack Chess Opening with FIDE CM Kingscrusher

The Nimzo-Larsen attack is a very interesting novel first move 1. b3 - it can also be disguised with the move order 1. Nf3 d5 and then 2. b3.

When playing in such a novel way with the White pieces, the opponents are often forced to improvise and end up playing quite often controversial moves, creating downsides in their position which are readily exploitable.

The Nimzo-Larsen is named after two players. Nimzo is short for Aron Nimzowitsch- a major "Hypermodern" thinker and theoretician who created the icon book called "My System" which has been a major influence on future generations of players and is still considered a landmark work today. The "Larsen" part is named after the Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen who became one of the strongest grandmasters in Western Europe in the same era as Bobby Fischer. Larsen played board 1 in the 1970 USSR vs Rest of World match for the "Rest of World" team.

It is a flank opening move and prepares to fianchetto the Queen's bishop

By fianchettoing the bishop, there are many interesting perspectives gained.

From a positional perspective, the opening increases the grip on the dark squares. From an attacking perspective, it can sometimes assist attacks if the opponent castles on the Kingside.

Kingscrusher was made aware of this novel opening and how great it can be when United States Super-Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura used it with both White and Black to win the ICC Blitz Chess Open in 2011.  Often because players are improvising against it, it is quite easy to gain a small to large advantage from the opening - larger than more mainstream "mainline" openings quite often.

The opening suffered a setback in a key game in the 1970 USSR vs Rest of World match but despite this, was used successfully in the same year by Bobby Fischer - who used it on five occasions, winning all five games. Fischer's opponents included notable grandmasters - GM Miroslav Filip, GM Henrique Mecking, GM Vladimir Tukmakov, and GM Ulf Andersson.

In modern chess, the opening is used at the Grandmaster level by exponents including Vladimir Bagirov, Baadur Jobava, Hikaru Nakamura, Richard Rapport, and Adhiban Baskaran.  Many other IMs and GMs use it as a surprise weapon as part of their opening repertoires and find also great application at faster time controls where opponent's lose precious time on the clock trying to resolve unknown problems from the very start of the game which this surprise opening can set.

It is easy to find new exponent games with an online database because usually "Nimzo-Larsen attack" has its own special section name.

Take the opponent by surprise - be able to play 1.b3 and win against anything the opponent does

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What you will learn

• Ability to have a full repertoire with White based on 1.b3
• Ability to create unusual problems for opponents in the Opening phase
• Ability to understand key example games from key exponents including Larsen and Nimzovich

Rating: 4.2

Level: All Levels

Duration: 22.5 hours

Instructor: Tryfon Gavriel