Queen's Indian DefenceE12 – E19
The Queen's Indian is what a Nimzo-Indian player does when White will not play Nc3. The fight is the same — who controls e4 — but with no knight to pin, Black contests the square from a distance, with a fianchettoed bishop and the knight on f6. The main line adds a twist: 4…Ba6 hits c4 while White's fianchetto is still unfinished, provokes b3, and then uses the dark squares that b3 loosened with …Bb4+. The structures that follow are among the most solid in chess. Black gets castled, plays …d5 or …c5 at the right moment, and is very rarely worse. What goes wrong is passivity: letting White play e4 unopposed, or trading the pieces that watch e4 without getting a break in first. The position is sound, but it only plays itself for as long as the fight for that square is on.
Played by
- Anatoly Karpov — made it the backbone of his Black repertoire, and defended it against the Petrosian System through his matches with Kasparov
- Aron Nimzowitsch — the author of the …Ba6 idea at the heart of the main line, as well as the defence next door that carries his name
Model game
Kasparov – Karpov, World Championship, Moscow 1984
Next: d4
