The Queen's Indian in the West

While preparing an article on the Queen's Indian Defense (QID), I consulted my usual references on the opening, among them the first five volumes of Kasparov's 'My Great Predecessors'. Tying together Kasparov's notes on a specific opening provides an excellent history of the evolution of that opening.

There were several good references in each volume to the QID. Vol.1 included Saemisch - Nimzowitsch, sometimes called the 'Immortal Zugzwang Game', which used the Rubinstein Variation. Another game was from the 1843 Staunton - St.Amant match, where Staunton transposed from a Queen's Gambit Tarrasch Defense into a 4.e3 variation of the QID. This is one example why Staunton is often regarded as an excellent opening theoretician, years ahead of his time.

The only volume which had no QIDs was the fourth. That is the 'Stars of the West' volume, featuring Reshevsky, Najdorf, Larsen, and Fischer. This struck me as curious. Have there been any great Western proponents of the QID or is it an opening which was the exclusive property of the Soviet School? Vol.2 had one game where Euwe played the White side against Keres, but no games with Euwe as Black.

Against 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3, Fischer played only 3...d5 or 3...c5. On Chesslab.com I found 33 games where Reshevsky played 3...b6, 30 games by Najdorf, and 39 by Larsen. It must have been an accident that none of these games was chosen for Predecessors Vol.4. They were all played in the era when the QID was considered stodgy and drawish.