Capablanca chess

The Cuban chess master José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942) also promoted his own "Capablanca chess" (or Capablanca's chess) variant in a series of talks, interviews and articles. These suggestions appeared as early as a 1926 article in the Cuban Revista Bimestre Cubana. Capablanca chess attracted some attention due to its promotion by one of the world's greatest chess players at the time, but it still failed to reach widespread popularity.

The main impulse behind Capablanca's promotion of this variant was his belief that high-level chess was becoming too reliant on memorization and "encyclopedic knowledge" of chess openings and positions. Capablanca feared that this would eventually lead to most high-level games ending in forced draws or at least becoming too reliant on following prepared opening variations learned by rote. This concern was also shared by his friend Emanuel Lasker according to Lasker's own Mein Wettkampf mit Capablanca.