Nimzowitsch

Sentenced to 10 years in the state penitentiary, Hubbard perfected his game over the next decade, studying Aron Nimzowitsch’s “My System” and playing correspondence chess with other inmates.

He also took me on a tour of games that Louis Paulsen had played in the 1800s and Aaron Nimzowitsch had experimented with in the 1920s, as well as others that had been played just weeks before—games gleaned from a Russian newspaper.

He suggested reading the book “My System” by Aron Nimzowitsch.

Aron Nimzowitsch, a contemporary of Alekhine’s, would smoke a noxious cigar and fix his opponent with a dread stare.

Today’s first game was one of Nimzowitsch’s greatest, a brilliant positional strangulation of German master Nathan Mannheimer taken from a 1930 Frankfurt tournament that Nimzowitsch won just ahead of a young Isaac Kashdan.