LIS023 Kupchik-Capablanca, Lake Hopatcong 1926

Hello!

I wondered if you can make suggestions for improvements. I am a player rated almost 2200 and I have gone through the chess lesson Kupchik - Capablanca just recently. The lesson starts with the move 1. h5!

I am not so sure if this is really so great. In the game white attacked with pieces and of course didn't succeed. But if he really tries to push g4 with slow g3, Rf2, Rg2, h3 etc, then many lines will open on the kingside and it's going to be much more dangerous than if black chooses to just race down the queenside and keep the pawns in the back following the rule 'Don't play on the side of the board where you are weaker' or 'Play on the side of the board where you are stronger' being the queenside.

It may be that white is slowed down by h5, but if he chooses to make pressure and open lines on the kingside (which he wants to) faster, he can probably just go h3 and Rg1 answering a black h4 with just g3 and the g-file will get opened. With Rf(x)g3 and Qg2 to follow the artillery looks quite impressive.

So I think it should be added that this h5-move is sort of double-edged and black got away so easily only because his opponent chose the wrong attacking plan.

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Kurai

Let's make it happen!

I'm not surprised although I might be a tad nonplussed that no one answered in 2 years. I think you may have gotten an answer sooner, say in 1 year 11 months (JK!) if you had posted a link to this game or lesson and even sooner if you had posted an interactive diagram for us to examine and work on, if you had set it up as a puzzle for instance.

You didn't even give the date and location of the game, making it even harder for anyone to look it up, although anyone with a massive DB could just search for all Kupchik-Capa games - but not everyone does.

Hello!

@sisu: Thank you for the feedback. It's good to see that somebody else agrees with me that there are also downsides to the move.

@NimzoRoy: The lesson I refered to as well as the location and year are the title of this topic. I could have made it clearer though by posting a diagram or by referring to it in my post via a link :)

I also opened this topic to give feedback for this lesson to the chess.com mentor system, and to suggest an improvement for this lesson. However, it seems there are difficulties changing lessons or nobody at chess.com is responsible for this as my post has stayed unanswered for a very long time :)

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Kurai