San Remo, 1930. Alekhine was crushing the field (he scored 14/15), and here he beats the great Nimzowitsch at his own positional game. Alekhine builds a queen-behind-doubled-rooks battery on the c-file — the formation now known as 'Alekhine's Gun' — and squeezes Black into total paralysis.
Sometimes you don't need to checkmate — you just need to take away every move. Alekhine clamped the position with pins and the heavy-piece battery on the c-file, then advanced quietly until Black, in near-zugzwang, had to give up material to breathe. Patient pressure beats premature attacks.
It's the formation of two rooks doubled on a file with the queen placed behind them, rather than in front. The name comes from this very game, where Alekhine lined up his heavy pieces on the c-file to crush Nimzowitsch. It maximises pressure down an open or half-open file.
By zugzwang and bind. Alekhine took away all of Black's useful moves with pins, an outpost knight, and the c-file battery. Eventually Nimzowitsch had to give up material just to make a legal move that didn't immediately lose. Pressure, not checkmate, did the job.
Nimzowitsch was the world's leading expert on exactly this kind of restraining, prophylactic chess. Beating him with his own methods, at a tournament Alekhine dominated 14/15, showed Alekhine at the peak of his powers.
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