ChessDojo Cofounder On How Three Creators Can Be Better Than One

IM David Pruess is one of the internet's most experienced content creators, having been in the game in one way or another for the better part of two decades. Along with IM Kostya Kavutskiy and GM Jesse Kraai, he is also a cofounder of ChessDojo, a training program, series of content channels, and community which they started in 2020.

David, who was one of the eight CoachChamps coaches last week, is our Creator of the Month this October. In a wide-ranging discussion with Chess.com, David explained the benefits of doing content as a team, his favorite types of content and content creators (including book authors), what's changed in chess content from 2009 to 2025, offered tips on how to create educational content specifically, and even more. 

How long have you been creating chess content, and what made you decide to start?

As far as I can recall, it was in 2009 when I took the role of Content Director at Chess.com. Before that I had already been teaching chess for a long time, so I had produced training materials and written articles for magazines, but this is when I first put the bulk of my efforts into trying to produce both educational and entertaining chess content for a mass market.

This was a major switch in my life from a couple years trying to play professionally, which I had just decided was too selfish a task (in my case; this is not a universal condemnation!), towards wanting to share and educate others.

Did you also want to talk about how you started Chess Dojo with Kostya and Jesse?

It started as a Twitch channel, very quickly a YouTube channel as well, and then we kept building more and more things on top of that. I think a lot of content creators basically work solo, and then at some point probably have someone helping with graphics or video editing, but they rarely have someone else doing the creative side with them—ideas and so forth.

We got the idea of doing it as three from the Chessbrahs, which seemed like a very good idea at the time and proved to be a good one. So that’s something I’d give as advice to anyone interested in chess content creation: if you work with a couple of other people, it’s more fun to be on a team and also more creative because you share ideas. Sometimes you have an idea that may or may not have worked, but if you say it to someone else, they see the potential and suggest a change or take the idea and do it better than you would have. There are ways an idea can come out much better if there are a couple of people bouncing it around together. That’s something maybe a little unique about how we work as Chess Dojo with the three of us.

It’s more fun to be on a team and also more creative because you share ideas.

And that gets at how we started Chess Dojo. Each of the three of us was thinking about doing more streaming in early 2020. We’d each done chess content before of different kinds—Kostya, Jesse, and I all had some history of doing content including streaming. We’d each independently had the idea of starting a new channel with multiple people like the Chessbrahs. We had each thought of the others, and we sent each other messages. I don’t even know who sent the first one off the top of my head, but one of us sent a message, and the other replied, “Whoa, I was just going to send you a message.” Not a month earlier or later, but within a day or two! So that’s the origin story—we each had the others in mind and wanted to do a group chess content project.

That’s a pretty good sign it was meant to be, that you all had the same thought at the same time!

And it’s interesting because you need a certain amount of agreement and a certain amount of variety between people who work together. You need to argue a bit, because if there’s no friction, it’s not productive. You get something from the other person, they get something from you, and the ideas get better. But you also can’t spend all your time just arguing. We have some shared philosophies about chess coaching and teaching, and that allows us to bounce ideas around and improve at the edges.

I was going to ask about some of the advantages of having a group instead of working solo.

We use a simple voting process between the three of us when we get stuck. For example, we might disagree on the appropriate Elo rating level for a book. If we can’t convince each other, we vote. We’ve each learned to take our losses when we get outvoted and keep moving quickly instead of arguing forever!

The content creation side of what you do—does it serve the training aspect, or is there a different kind of interaction?

From the beginning, we wanted our content to be both educational and entertaining. But I’d guess we spend about 80% of our energy on the educational side versus maybe 20% on entertainment. There’s definitely more work and effort that goes into making it educational compared to things like a chess game show that are purely entertaining. But we also believe educational content should be enjoyable. People aren’t just consuming it to get better—they’re enjoying it too.

So we keep it entertaining enough to keep people motivated. For example, we do commentary on tournaments—whether it’s 600-rated players online or the World Championship Candidates. We do live commentary to learn and explain things, but we also tell jokes, stories, and anecdotes.

Would you have any advice for someone thinking about doing educational content specifically?

Sure. If you want to teach chess, you should also play chess. If you want to do educational content, you should be both playing and teaching as well as creating content. That may sound like doing multiple jobs at once. It’s a lot of work to play tournaments, coach, and create content, but you can make content out of your coaching and playing. A lot of people do that: They broadcast their games, collaborate on commentary, and so on.

If you want to teach chess, you should also play chess... It’s a lot of work to play tournaments, coach, and create content, but you can make content out of your coaching and playing.

That’s really on point. Someone might want to start just coming up with ideas, but without those experiences, they’d be limited in how helpful or interesting their content could be.

Yeah. Here’s a concept I want to credit Jesse with: He thinks it’s really important to be working on your own game. So, similar to what I said about playing tournaments, we have a training program, and Jesse is adamant about following it himself. If he expects others to spar openings or analyze games, he does it himself and records it so people can see what it looks like. That lets you lead by example and make sure your product is good—like if you ran a bakery, you’d eat your own bread to make sure it’s still good.

Even once you know it’s good, you still need to remember what it’s like to do it. When you tell someone, “You’ve got 12 hours this week; here’s how I’d use it,” you can only answer that well if you’ve recently done similar work yourself or talked with students at that level. You really have to be in it to provide good advice.

That definitely tracks. You’ve been in the content game for a long time—2009 is very different from 2025. Do you consider anything from then still applicable today?

Honestly, I think the vision we brainstormed for chess commentary in 2009 is still applicable today. Some attempts to improve on it, like slicker production or adding engines to broadcasts, haven’t necessarily helped. But one thing that’s changed—but was part of the dream even back then—is that people now go to live events and record. Back then, there wasn’t the budget to do that, but now people film in parks, chess clubs, bars, and coffee shops. You get more of the texture of life—the faces, how people hold pieces, who’s nervous—and that adds a great dimension.

I’ve seen great examples of that kind of content, though I don’t have a camera crew myself. There’s still room to innovate, and I love coming up with chess game shows. I love sometimes watching little chess skits—the green pawn wandering around, or when Danny and Robert did funny stuff with Fabi during the World Championship, like breakfast skits. Maybe that’s silly to some, but I think it’s fun and cool. Fundamentally, though, for someone trying to get better at chess, I don’t think there have been dramatic innovations in educational content—there’s just more of it available. Books remain a solid option.

Who are some of your favorite chess content creators, and why?

I love chess books written by the greats of the game, world champions and other legendary players and teachers, such as GM Mikhail Tal, GM Garry Kasparov, Alexander Alekhine, IM Jeremy Silman, IM Mark Dvoretsky, Richard Reti, etc. I also love the idea of live commentary on chess tournaments, and my two favorite commentators are IM Danny Rensch and GM Robert Hess.

In my early days at Chess.com I learned a lot from the videos of GMs Melik Khachiyan, Dejan Bojkov, and Roman Dzindzichashvili. One day I found that GM Magnus Carlsen now has videos on our site (!!) so I watched a couple of those and they were great for me, too.

Chess puzzles are also pretty important for me, and GM Jacob Aagaard is a great source of those; he’s probably one of the best chess trainers in the world now.

And my favorite chess content creator whose content I have yet to consume is GM Matthew Sadler. He is an expert on how humans can learn from and train with computers, and that is a likely next step in my own chess journey. I have already bought one of his books, and I am confident that reading it will be a revelatory process.

What is your single favorite piece of chess content you've ever created?

It’s hard to pick, but I will answer that to me the most important piece, and the one closest to my heart right now, which I want to spread is this video, The Dangers of Chess: 

One of the things that I am most keen on teaching my students is to maintain a good relationship with chess and themselves. To be able to handle losses, disappointments, and the like, while maintaining their love of chess and their love of themselves. I think chess is such a great game with so much to teach us, yet so many chess players are miserable—while engaged in their favorite activity! It doesn’t make sense, and I really hope to change that on a communal scale.

What is your single favorite piece of chess content that was created by someone else?

The first things I think of are books published before I was born. I still think a chess book is a great form of content—they still exist, new ones are still being published, and many are excellent. My picks would be a tie between Grandmaster Preparation by GM Lev Polugaevsky and My Life and Games by Tal.

After so much exposure to modern content, it didn’t even occur to me that books are content, but they clearly are.

When I saw your question, I thought you probably weren’t even thinking of books as a possible answer. You might expect me to say TikTok, but I don’t have TikTok or Instagram. I don’t even watch Reels—I think that’s what they’re called. I assume anything that short has minimal value. Anything too bite-sized can’t be deep, like eating chips. It can’t really have value.

Right. We’ve all heard things like “check for blunders,” but in a 30-second clip that wouldn’t tell anyone much new. You’re completely right that books weren’t on my radar.

I was also thinking of other chess content I like. Searching for Bobby Fischer and The Queen’s Gambit came to mind too.

I also think someone like Tal today, he would still write books, but he’d be great at internet content too.

He was already a rock star back then. People would go crazy for anything to do with him.

Yeah, fantastic player and personality.

Imagine you could do a chess-based collab with anyone in the world. Who would it be, and why?

Kasparov. He is my chess hero, and the only person I’ve ever felt too intimidated to talk to. Although I may already have wasted my chance, if I could have a conversation or shared project with him—without passing out and missing the whole thing—that would be one of the top moments of my life.

If I could have a conversation or shared project with [Kasparov]—without passing out and missing the whole thing—that would be one of the top moments of my life.

What’s your favorite thing about creating? What makes it fun?

If I’m honest, I think when people post or send me a message thanking me. Those messages let me know that I did not waste my efforts and thus give me the motivation and justification to keep going.

When I am actually preparing the material before recording or presenting it, that’s actually not a relaxed flow state for me. It very much feels like work, and I’m constantly warring with myself over the quality of the examples, the thoroughness of the structure, and the fear that I might be forgetting something. So I much more enjoy the moment where I’m able to give something to others.

Can you tell us a little bit about your creative process?

Overall, I’d say my process is a total mess. First of all, I forget great ideas I have—and unlike what your parents promise you, they don’t always come back to me! So periodically, but not exhaustively, I jot them down in a file of content projects for the future. Sometimes I open up the list and it all comes true, and it’s great. But other times I misplace the file, and have to start a new list.

Another major problem is that I often do 95% of a project, but get hung up on some detail—like, two examples missing in the second worksheet that accompanies the fourth video of a ten-part course. And if I ever satisfactorily work out examples good enough for my standards, time has passed, and I’ve misplaced a different video or worksheet from the same course, etc. An absolute disaster, but that’s the sad truth!

One thing that works for me is that I’ve taught and interacted with thousands of chess lovers over three decades now. I listen pretty closely, and I’m pretty good at getting into the minds of other chess players. So I often have good ideas of what people might like. Also, I like to try lots of things, so I spend time dreaming up new formats for events, or new chess game shows, and that can lead to some great fun.

You mentioned at one point having fun with the process. Tal talked about being so engrossed in playing that he didn’t think about the result. You mentioned some obstacles that sometimes interfere with production. I imagine it’s just as important to enjoy the content creation process as it is playing chess.

Yeah. Normally, I tell people to do things they enjoy—in life, in chess, etc. If someone said, “I could study this book I hate that targets a weakness,” or “I could study this book I love about endgames,” I’d say read the one you enjoy. You won’t get much out of something you dislike.

And yet, as I said, most of the process of creating content I don’t actually enjoy. It’s like pulling teeth for me. I have a bad process in some ways, so there’s definitely struggle there. It’s not fully in line with my life philosophy, but I feel that what I eventually produce is worth it. When I have the finished product, I feel really satisfied.

Yeah, that resonates. As a writer, I enjoy the process when I can—if it’s a topic I’m interested in, it flows, and if not, it takes extra time.

Here’s another example of my problem. Long ago, we came up with the idea of invitational tournaments for kids, sponsored by ChessKid. The idea was both to do something good for the chess community and to provide marketing and visibility for ChessKid. At the time, the youngest championship tournament in the U.S. was the U.S. Cadet, an under-16 event. I came up with the idea to have under-14, under-12, under-10, and under-8 championships each year.

We ran them, with open and girls’ sections too, and they were great. The early ones had kids like future GMs Jeffrey Xiong and Ruifeng Li who became super strong later. I went to write an article about it for Chess Life for Kids, which was important for publicity, but I couldn’t finish without writing something nice about every participant. For every kid, I had to find a game, a move, or something great they did. If someone went 0-6, I wrote about their resilience, how they still played a 70-move final round game after losing six in a row. For every kid, I wanted to find a character strength or positive anecdote. I wrote a 40-page article that took ages.

Eventually, I had to stop writing articles because they were too long. I was too perfectionist, too detailed, not enough cutting. That’s an example of my problem.

We don’t have to make that a major theme in the piece, but we can mention it.

I don’t mind being embarrassed or talking about things I’m bad at. It’s fine.

We’ll put it in, but we won’t headline it.

Creator of the Month: He sucks at creating! He doesn’t like doing it, he loses most of his content before publishing...

[Laughing] We won't frame it that way.