An overview of GM Simon Williams’ lessons on Chess.com
One of the best features of Chess.com is the comprehensive set of lessons. They provide so many great courses, for all levels, to improve at chess. Having utilised these lessons extensively myself, with over 3,700 completed as at the time of writing, I thought it was time to do an overview of my favourite instructor. Who is my favourite Chess.com instructor? GM Simon Williams, aka Ginger_GM, of course.
It is Simon’s ability to provide easy to understand instruction, combined with his sense of humour and down to earth style, which makes him a personal favourite. His ability to explain the ideas behind the moves is fundamental to learning how to improve at chess. Watching his videos, I always learn something new, and it’s fun at the same time. As they say, that’s a win, win. This overview is current as at the time of writing – late October 2021, so it may become out of date as more content is added in the future. On that score, one can only hope.
How many lessons are there by Simon?
So, how many lessons are there on Chess.com by Simon Williams. Well, a filter by instructor brings back a total of 27 courses with a whopping 158 lessons!
The first lesson was released on March 2, 2019, and the latest lesson was released on February 9, 2021. It’s noteworthy that all 158 lessons are video lessons. When watching some of the videos, it is apparent that some were recorded earlier, many years prior to 2019, before he even had his now-famous ginger beard (see photo below), so perhaps some of the release dates given for the courses coincide with a republishing of material with a site upgrade? Of this I’m not sure, perhaps others know more about this.
The 158 video lessons amount to a total running time of 2,463 minutes, or 41 hours and 3 minutes. That’s a lot of instructional content and I haven’t even gone through it all... yet. Following each video lesson are five challenges, which means there are a total of 790 challenges in all.
Here’s hoping that further content is added in the future, although it seems that Simon is a busy boy these days, providing content for other chess websites, as well as commentary on tournaments. Simon has his own personal website: https://gingergm.com/ and is now also involved with the GChess project: https://gchess.com/. You can also find more of his content on YouTube and Twitter, so the man is prolific, but maybe he will have time in the future to work for Chess.com again. Maybe it’s already in the planning?
Courses by Type
Breaking down Simon’s courses by the Chess.com categories we get the following totals:
- Openings = 12
- Strategy = 2
- Tactics - 6
- Endgames = 0
- Master Games = 7
Note that there are three lessons categorised as ‘Attacking’ that I have included under Tactics and that whilst there are no lessons listed under the Endgames category, there is a lesson called “Tactical Ideas in the Endgame” that comes under ‘Tactics’. So there is content that covers all aspects of the game.
Courses by Level
Breaking down Simon’s courses by level we get the following:
- Beginner = 1
- Intermediate = 6
- Advanced = 5
- Mastery = 15
Whilst 20 of the 27 courses are listed as advanced or mastery, I still think a lot of those lessons would be very instructive and useful to intermediate players.
A deep dive into his Openings courses
Almost half of the courses by GM Simon Williams are on the opening phase of the game. He covers openings for both black and white, both solid openings and wild stuff, such as his “Spicy Openings” series that includes the Belgrade Gambit, the Max Lange Attack and the Evans Gambit, as well as a course on Spicy Gambits that includes such rippers as the Hillbilly Attack and the Monkey’s Bum!
Personal favourites of mine are his lessons under the course “London System for the Busy Chess Player” as this is a very popular opening today and so learning it can really help your results. He describes this as an opening for the lazy chess player, as you can basically get the same set up (with white) each time, rather than having to learn lots of different set ups to counter what your opponent plays. As a player of the French Defense, I also enjoyed his course “Why Simon Loves the French Defense”. It turns out he has played this opening his entire life, so there’s plenty of personal experience for him to draw on with this one. All his openings courses are well worth checking out.
A complete list of his opening courses are given below:
- Spicy Openings: The Belgrade Gambit
- Spicy Openings: The Max Lange Attack
- Spicy Openings: The Evans Gambit
- Spicy Gambits!
- The complete English Defense
- Why Simon Loves the Sicilian
- Why Simon Loves the French Defense
- The Classical Dutch
- Crush with the King’s Gambit
- Play the Budapest Gambit
- London System for the Busy Chess Player
- Nakamura’s King’s Indian Defense
My Personal favourites
The following are my personal favourite courses in the GM Simon Williams canon:
Checkmate Patterns You Should Know – whilst this is listed as a beginner course, it seems like a fundamental part of chess knowledge to recognise the checkmate patterns given in this course. This is a must see.
Sacrifice on h6 – so many good ideas here on when is the right time to sacrifice on h6 for a winning attack, especially with isolated queen’s pawn positions.
Top Five Moves: Legends Edition – these videos are highly entertaining and I love the explosions when announcing the killer moves!
Name Your Pawns – memorable for the names given to each of the pawns, from Arry the a-pawn all the way to Harry the h-pawn.
What are his most popular courses?
The summary screen for each course contains a total of the number of students, so using this measure, these are his top five courses by popularity:
- Spicy Openings: The Evans Gambit – 72,672
- Checkmate Patterns You Should Know – 49,315
- London System for the Busy Chess Player – 43,790
- Nakamura’s King’s Indian Defense – 36,836
- Play the Budapest Gambit – 16,447
Conclusion
So that’s my overview of this considerable body of work on Chess.com. There is a lot of content there that can help you improve at chess, and with improvement comes more enjoyment. I hope this overview is of use to someone out there. If there is something I have left out, let me know in the comments below, and if you have a favourite Chess.com lesson instructor apart from Ginger_GM, I’d love to hear who it is and why.
