Preparing London with 2. h3

"Preparing the London"

HAHAHA

Interesting position : 6. Nc3

u just play Blumenfeld gambit with h3 which doesnt make any sense (loses tempo, weakens position...)

IM poucin: Good remark.

Well, I can acknowledge that chesster3145 and IM poucin have shown that, if black plays 2...c5 then 2. h3 was useless and the waste of tempo.

True enough. If Black plays 2... d5, though, there is nothing hugely wrong with the early h2-h3. White should maybe be a little bit worse off than in a normal London, but that's about it.

Another embarassing variation...

instead of h3, white has Nf3 or e3 here, so he is more ready to face this attack.

But here it is clearly worse.

White would prefer to have played a useful instead of h3...

In the beautiful Asian game of go they have a method of analysis that is called "tewari" in Japanese. It is basically a shortcut to judge the merit of a sequence of moves. They change the move order slightly and judge whether the last move of the changed sequence still makes sense, or if it is pointless. I call it "a shortcut", because this kind of analysis, while still requiring profound positional judgement (go player would prefer to speak about shapes, efficiency and stuff, but it boils down to the same), does not require too much forward calculation. Now Your 2.h3 loses tewari analysis all the time. For example

1. d4 Nf6 2. h3 c5 3. d5 e6 4. c4 b5 5. Nf3 would be changed into 1.d4 Nf5 2.c4 e6 3. Nf3 c5 4.d5 b5 5.h3 and you don't want to play h3 there.

Please note that tewari analysis only tells that a move is sub-optimal, and not by how much.

nescitus: Interesting method, thanks for sharing your ideas.

Some resources on tewari: https://senseis.xmp.net/?Tewari

Explanation by a storng non-Asian player, John Fairbarn:

There are two separate modes of analysis: (1) try changing the move order to see whether you would have ended up making a different choice if you have had that freedom in actual play - if so, that hints at inefficiency in your actual choice; (2) remove an equal number of surplus stones for each side and see whether, after that, one side has any "silly" stones still there.

Perhaps white can play 4.e3 to meet an eventual ...Qb6 with Nc3.

But yes, h3 at move two is far from being a bright idea. Even in lines where Black plays ...d5, ...c5, ...Nf6, ...Nc6 and ...e6, the move ....Bd6 is usually met by Bf4-g3, which of course is crap with a pawn already at h3.

The baltic is not very reliable, which is basically a london a tempo down, so it's no surprise 1.d4 2.h3 intending to play like a london from there is not good.

Yes, h4 is an interesting attack in London.

My stockfish engine says that h3 isn't a bad move, so why not? White plays h3 anyways.

White plays h3 when it needs to do so, not "anyways". Playing it as early as move 2 makes no sense.

That was actually a joke. I played so many london players who just repeated the same moves again and again. I have a lot of problems with black against them. 

But there have been some interesting games on GM level in this opening with white and black.

I have to look into the black wins.

What's wrong with 2. ... d6 intending to meet 3. Bf4 with 3. ... Nc6 followed by ... e5 ?

Eg: 1. d4 Nf6 2. h3 d6 3. Bf4 Nc6 4. d5 e5 (hitting the f4 Bishop).

as soon as black plays Be7 with a N on f6 this h3 is playable to secure your Bishop, no need to play it before

Thanks for sharing. And I agree. Or rather - it's a fact. 2. h3 is suboptimal compared to other openings. And that's the right word. It's not a bad opening. I have checked several lines with Stockfish 15 and 40-50 depth. It's playable up to the highest level even if black gains more center pressure than in more established openings.