A Century of Chess: Frankfurt 1930
In a sense the high-water mark of Nimzowitsch’s career. Nimzowitsch had an astonishing success at Karlsbad 1929, scoring +9, and to outright win two consecutive international tournaments, even if the quality of the opposition was somewhat lower at Frankfurt, cemented his case as being among the very best in the world. Really, by this time Nimzowitsch had fully earned his right to challenge for the world championship, and in normal circumstances — a FIDE-administered championship system or a financial climate that wasn’t the Depression — a match would have been arranged between Alekhine and Nimzowitsch sometime around 1930 or 1931. That’s a fascinating (and little discussed) what-if in chess history, something like the Tal-Petrosian match that should have been in the early ‘60s, featuring pure attack against pure defense, an unstoppable force against an immovable object. Alekhine was the better player, as he demonstrated in his head-to-head encounters with Nimzowitsch at San Remo 1930 and Bled 1931, and there is little doubt that he would have won, but the absence of this match really is a loss to chess history.
Nimzowitsch’s competitive abilities are very much on display in this tournament where he cruised through the field scoring +9-1=1. The game with Mannheimer, for instance, shows the level of sadism that Nimzowitsch could attain with his system, wrapping his opponent into such a tight box that even with a healthy contingent of pieces he was powerless to stop the advance of the a-pawn or to keep his queen from being trapped within the heart of her own position. Even Nimzowitsch defeat at this tournament was a source of satisfaction. When he lost to Przepiorka, he heartily congratulated him. When Przepiorka asked him why he was suddenly so friendly after Nimzowitsch had cold-shouldered him for years, Nimzowtisch said, "I always thought you were a member of the Tarrasch school." At least in Nimzowitsch’s mind, it wasn’t just that he had become the ‘crown prince of chess' — as a business card of his from this time allegedly read — but this his ‘system’ had revolutionized the entirety of the game, and soon everybody would be playing in the same way, first neutralizing an opponent's initiative and then gradually pushing him back with hardly any need for any of the precepts of the classical or Romantic schools.
As dominant as Nimzowitsch was, Isaac Kashdan, remarkably enough, kept pace with him. Kashdan has a good claim to being the most underestimated player in chess history — doubly surprising since he was American and Americans tend to get the benefit of American press and hyperbole. But Kashdan had several other demerits working against him. He was from a Jewish immigrant background, he had his peak years in the midst of the Depression, his personality was a bit colorless (he was an insurance agent and something of that is reflected in his play), and his chess was stylistically unexciting (he was called ‘der kleine Capablanca,’ ‘the little Capablanca,’ meaning that he played with the same positional precision but without the great one’s sprezzatura).
He never won a major international tournament or had the conditions for the American hype machine to kick into effect, and, actually, it was that lack of publicity that was his undoing as a chess professional. Kashdan had a couple of years of being among the very best in the world, but then the Depression and family obligations kicked in and he dedicated himself to the insurance job. As we can see in these games, his style feels absolutely like that of a very dedicated office worker, collecting all the positional advantages he could and executing with mathematical precision.
Sources: Nimzowitsch images from Edward Winter's page.
