Hi, I’m an under 1200 player and want to learn chess and have fun playing chess. I want to know if anyone else thinks that both the Video lectures and Chess Mentor are just continuations of Tactics Trainer and not real teaching aids to learn chess from, but another form of training? Don’t get me wrong training is important and useful, but only after your have learned a skill, not to learn a skill. For me, I’m finding the real value of Chess.com is in Community, playing Live Chess, and Tactics Trainer not so much in Video Lectures and Chess Mentor. So is a Diamond Membership really better then a Gold Membership for someone at my skill lever?

Have a great day in Christ! 

I found that there are very useful beginner video lessons that would help you. Chess mentor tends to take one concept and run with it, so maybe not as much. But you can chose the courses you want to study so you can avoid that. But at your level, you need to play as much as you can as well as study.

Chess mentor is fun, but maybe not so usefull. The video lessons are pretty great.

Now I have only used the free lectures at Chess mentor, but it seems like it's an extremely usefull tool for improving.

I would suggest learning an entire "lesson" from chess master rather then going back and forth between topics.  Otherwise it becomes diffucult to remember anything.

Chess videos are good, but not the ones you find on the internet generally.  I much prefer longer videos like fritz trainers, as they have the time to fully explain a topic.  Most online videos will go from 10-30 minutes, and you won't end up absorbing it's lessons.

Think of it this way, when you were in school your teachers split content into units correct?  That allowed you to learn one thing at a time.  Now imagine your teachers kept on changing between the 6+ units you go through in a year, how do you think you would learn then?  This is the essence of why I'm against anything, be it lessons OR games, that you spend only a short amount of time on.