Nimzo liked to 'checkmate' (or 'stalemate') enemy Queens: several of his games end with elaborate queen traps. Here, the biter is bitten - and his own Queen falls into a type of 'perpetual check'. Other people would just see it as an ordinary forced repetition, but Nimzo's original sense of humour enjoyed this kind of king/queen irony. But the irony and humour are lost in the translation of 'Praxis'.

As Ray Keene says in his book 'Aron Nimzowitsch: a Reappraisal', even the title of Praxis is bad. In German it's 'Die Praxis Meines Systems' which clearly echoes his masterpiece, My System. A better title/translation would be 'My System in Practice'.

Old as it is, the translation of My System by Philip Hereford catches the tone and humor well. But Chess Praxis misses the mark badly.

I also have some other Nimzo-related books. Keene's A Reappraisal, published in the 1970s and updated in the 90s, is excellent. Fred Reinfeld edited a collection of Nimzo games, with light notes, in the 1940s: it's called Hypermodern Chess. There's also a very good book (in Danish) by Bjorn Nielsen, called Nimzowitsch: Danmarks Skaklaerer. I got a 2nd-hand copy recently and am doing my best to translate it, very slowly.

Nimzowitsch gives this amusing line: 28.Qg3+ Kh8 29.Qh4 Kg7 30.g4 Bf4? 31.g5 Nd5 32.Qh6+ Kh8 33.Ng6 mate.

Here, 30...Bf4? is a mistake, but Black actually has no satisfactory defence after 30.g4. If 30...fxg4 31.Nxg4 Nxg4 32.Rxe7+ is fatal. And 30.g4 Bf4 31.g5 Bxe5 32.Qh6+ Kh8 33.dxe5 is worse - the Bb2 gets to join in the mating attack on the long diagonal.

Interestingly, when Nimzowitsch played 1.e3 - Van't Kruijs Opening - it was usually accompanied with b3, Bb2 and f4. Nimzo himself called this the Dutch Attack, but it's now known as the Nimzo-Larsen attack.

<Blacks wastes the opportunity to get a solid position with 21...Bxe4 followed by 22...e6

...and once again 22...Bxe4 was better also!>