Doubled pawns on the c-file are not to the taste of most players with White, and so it comes as no surprise that 4.Qc2 – the Classical Variation – has become one of the most important lines against the Nimzo-Indian. The queen move ensures that White will keep his pawn chain intact, ...Bxc3+ can now be met simply with Qxc3. In the 1930s 4.Qc2 was employed frequently by Capablanca and Alekhine, but then retreated quite clearly into the background on account of the very popular Rubinstein Variation. It was not until Kasparov took up the move at the end of the 1980s that it once more became a serious rival to 4.e3.
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