Is this normal?

"If white opens the game by moving a center pawn two squares and black replies symmetrically, White will try to turn his opening advantage to account by selecting Black's fixed center pawn as the object of attack, and thus bring pressure to bear on his opponent's position or open up lines to his advantage.  As we have seen, that is the real meaning of the Ruy Lopez and Queen's Gambit. Conversely, all the methods for which Black strives for equalization against 1.e4 or 1.d4 have this in common, that they make White's middle pawn the point of attack. In the e-pawn openings, d5 is thus the liberating move for Black, as a rule, and in the d-pawn openings, it is c5 or e5.

By this reasoning, we have already brought out before that 1....e5 or 1...d5 is probably not the best reply to 1.e4 or 1.d4 respectively, as they at once offer White a point of attack. This view is shared by many chessmasters today.  By this time, we realize that it is possible to doubt whether 1.e4 or 1.d4 are the best opening moves for White, for we have seen above that those center pawns are the very ones which will become the target of Black's operations in order to obtain equalization.

But it follows from this that no matter how many good features the moves 1.e4 and 1.d4 may have, as far as gaining freedom of movement, dominating the center, and opening up the game for the other pieces are concerned, nevertheless they have also a weakness, namely, that they themselves are a point of attack for the opponent.  Of course, this is no sufficient reason for condemning these moves, since it remains questionable whether one could find a better opening system, that is, a system which offers similar advantages and lesser disadvantages.  Nevertheless, after realizing that the traditional opening moves are not altogether beyond criticism, it is the duty of the thinking chessplayer to occupy himself with the problem of finding a better opening system. As the opening is in general a struggle for domination in the center, the characteristic feature of every such new system will be a desire to direct pressure against the center without fixing the middle pawns too soon.

The natural opening move in such a system is 1.Nf3. The move directs pressure against the center, prevents e5 and keeps open almost all possibilities for the first player. The obstruction of the f-pawn is of little import, as this pawn should rarely, and only with the greatest caution, be drawn into the conflict in the center, on the account of the weakening of its own king's position. As the reply ...e5 is impossible, the adherent of the old views thereupon plays 1...d5, whereby White really plays a kind of Indian Defense in the opening move.  For this reason, Kmoch calls this system the Indian Attack.

But the student should not allow this designation to lead him into applying the principles of the Indian Defense to the Indian Attack. The essential difference lies in the fact that Black plays the Indian Defense with the desire of obtaining equalization. The first player, on the other hand, chooses a definite opening system in order to turn the definite opening advantage to account, and to improve his chances.  Now it is clear to any experienced chess player, as a matter of course, that an attack which will bring an advantage, when justified by the fact the first player is a tempo ahead, may be ill-advised and produce the reverse effect, when the development is as yet insufficient.

In the beginning of 1923, the Indian attacking system of this kind were introduced into master play. One of them, deriving from Nimzowitsch, is intended to continue the pressure against the weakened point e4 after 1.Nf3 by 2.b3, combined with Bb2.  Nimzowitsch, who is to be credited with working the best method of the Indian Defense, has, as we shall see,applied the methods of defense to attack.

But what is good for the defense, what is good for obtaining equalization, is not suited to winning an advantage. The tendency, expressed in this system, to attack the opponent's weak points in order to establish strong posts there oneself as advance guards, and on the other hand to leave the opponent's strong points untouched, leads to mutual blocking and a completely closed position, in which the advantage of the opening move hardly counts any longer.  That is the real reason why this system is especially desirable for the second player, as we have already explained elsewhere, but as an attacking system, it would hardly become standard. 

In order to derive advantage from the opening move, one must play with a system which does not allow the second player to bring about a closed position without disadvantage in space, nor to place immovable bulwarks in the center.  Not the weak points,therefore, as in the defense, but the strong points, that are to become bulwarks, must be brought under fire.  It is upon this idea that the opening system introduced by the author of this book is based.

After 1.Nf3..d5, White directs the attack not against the weak e5 point, but against d5, continuing with 2.c4,g3, and Bg2. In the nomenclature of the theory of openings, this opening system has been given the author's name, in accordance with the suggestion of Serbian master Vukovic.  In addition, there is also the designation Zukertort Opening, which is much more general, in fact, as it is characterized by the first move Nf3. Kmoch, who is of the opinion that openings should not be named after persons, for both the systems discussed here, the designations "Queen's Indian Attack" and "King's Indian Attack".  Just as in the case of the Indian Defense, we believe that here to it will soon appear how superfluous these names are.  While in defense the King's Indian is dying out, in the attack the Queen's Indian is hardly played anymore!

By far the best defense against this attacking system, which Tartakower named "Opening of the Future", is still to be found in the counterattack first employed by Lasker in New York 1924.  To be sure, Lasker's method is probably held in greater esteem because of the repute of its creator and the success he has won with it, than because of its true value, as the following may serve to show."

---Richard Reti