My System

My System is at the top of a very short list of chess classics. Nimzowitsch’s ideas have had a profound influence on modern chess thinking. Most chess masters will at some point have studied Nimzowitsch’s work, and not to have read My System is by many regarded as a shocking gap in a chess player’s education.

The problem for an English-speaking audience has been that My System was written in German more than eighty years ago. The commonly-used contemporary translations have sounded dated for...