Do you recommend learning openings with videos, or is it better to get a chessable course? what other options can you suggest?
People learn differently. Some can learn from videos. The lessons here mainly use video lectures followed up by challenges.
What level are you at? The lessons for those new to chess are free.
/ https://www.chess.com/lessons?level=beginner&theme=rules-and-basics
Neither!
A video can be used as an intro or supplemental source, but is not reliable as a standalone item.
Chessable is not good because all it does is promote memorization and not actual understanding.
Best way to learn an opening is to sit down at a table, get out a board and 32 pieces, get an intro book on the opening in Question, Luke The French Move by Move, and then to continue expansion of knowledge of various lines with more advanced works on specific lines, like The Wonderful Winawer or The Modernized French 1 and 2 (The first is the Winawer, the second is the Tarrasch).
Hard work with deep analysis and having to physically make the moves yourself and studying the position after each move, understanding WHY each move is made, far outbeats blindly staring at a screen or repeated clicking of a mouse, and sheer memory like chessable promotes does you no good. If a player deviates on me in the French, I can typically figure out why it is bad. If all I did was memorize lines, I'd be just as lost as him, kinda like how I am with the Grunfeld. I can spew lines to the end of kingdom come. But you deviate, I am lost. I have no clue. Because I have not studied the Grunfeld in the proper manner or with the same interest as I have with the French and King's Indian.
A video might be decent supplementary material, but it will fail as a standalone item and chessable is crap!
Thanks for the replies, I though that chessable was the best way to learn openings, there are many good reviews. I did try to learn some free courses to later find out that I could not remember the moves in actual games, I completed the course around 3 times but I never understood the reason of the moves. I posted in the forum but people told me that memorization will come handy soon If I do the courses more times and that chessable was the best site in the world to learn openings. I will try to get the book you are recommending and set up a 2d board to go around the moves, thanks.
Chessable is fine as long as you
a) use a good course. Many authors tend to not give proper explanations for the moves they recommend and/or not structure the course properly. Hence it will come down to, as stated in #3, dumb repetition of a narrow subset. There are free samples for many courses, you can try and see. I've tried quite a number of them before I've found those right for me. Wasn't easy, let me tell you.
b) understand that one course, however good it may be, is not enough for proper study. Then again, maybe you don't need to go balls deep into the lines (most likely you don't, honestly)
c) understand that openings shouldn't be the main focus if you're not prepping for some serious OTB tournament
I like watching videos. I have learned alot wating Daniel Naroditskys speedruns videos on youtube. He is very good at explaining. Like he does a move and explains why he made that move. Also I like that the speedrun videos have different rating. So I coice often to watch the videos in 1500-1600 range over and over because that is a bit higher then me so I learn how to beat people my rating. Also like there a bit of a waste if I watch the 900 rated videos seen I allready know how to beat a 900 and alot of the moves explaining there is a bit to simply. Like I allready understand alot what he is explaining there so its kinda a waste of time. But yeah that being said, I think videos can be a great tool.
Thanks for the replies, I though that chessable was the best way to learn openings, there are many good reviews. I did try to learn some free courses to later find out that I could not remember the moves in actual games, I completed the course around 3 times but I never understood the reason of the moves. I posted in the forum but people told me that memorization will come handy soon If I do the courses more times and that chessable was the best site in the world to learn openings. I will try to get the book you are recommending and set up a 2d board to go around the moves, thanks.
You are proving them wrong by not remembering them when you get to the board!
Also, memorization won't do you jack if you do not understand it and your opponent deviates!
I literally had a game over the board that went 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Qb6 5.Ne2 (instead of 5.Nf3)
If all you did was memorize the advance French, you'd have no idea what to do here. I smacked him silly because I UNDERSTAND, NOT MEMORIZE, the French Defense.
By the way, Ne2 impedes the Bishop on f1, which fianchettoing it does you nothing in the advance French, and with the Knight on e2 instead of f3, the e5-pawn is weak
"Do you recommend learning openings with videos" ++ No
"is it better to get a chessable course?" ++ No
"what other options can you suggest?" ++ Do not worry about openings. Just apply opening principles: the center, piece development. At your level games are lost/won by blunders, not related to openings. Focus on blunder prevention. always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it.
"Do you recommend learning openings with videos" ++ No
"is it better to get a chessable course?" ++ No
"what other options can you suggest?" ++ Do not worry about openings. Just apply opening principles: the center, piece development. At your level games are lost/won by blunders, not related to openings. Focus on blunder prevention. always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it.
This is the kind of reply I was fearing, I will skip this answer.
I just wanted to know what method was better. I will stick to thrillerFan who seems more knowledgeable and does not come to preach.
Do you recommend learning openings with videos, or is it better to get a chessable course? what other options can you suggest?
Both are fine, but a video might be harder to learn with since you’re only watching a video while in a chessable course you’re actually moving the pieces.
However, my preferred method is books. They explain the reasoning behind the moves, some offer complete games to look at, and you’re basically forced to follow along with an actual Board, which helps when remembering the moves.
However, my preferred method is books. They explain the reasoning behind the moves, some offer complete games to look at, and you’re basically forced to follow along with an actual Board, which helps when remembering the moves.
To the OP - This is another poster you want to take advice from. I thank you for the praise in post 11, but there are also other good posters. This is one of them ^^^^^.
Pfren is of course another!
There are a lot of dumb ones out there though. You can see another example of idiocy in the thread on Torre vs Trompowsky. I am pretty sure you can figure out which poster I am referring to (a comment by pfren in that thread could also give it away)
The way that worked for me was to carefully analyze my slow games to see where I went wrong. (Don't analyze blitz games unless you keep losing in the same opening.) Where did I go wrong in the opening? in the middlegame? in the endgame? When I thought I had the answer, I would get out the reference books to check my analysis. In early days MCO was the _only_ openings reference, later ECO, nowadays it's the database, currently I use database.chessbase.com.
The reason this method works is complex, has to do with how people remember things. You played a game and made a mistake, this cost you. When you analyze and find the correct move, it's tied to the previous error _and_ to the effort you just made, so is more memorable for those two reasons. Now if you check a database or an engine and find your analysis was correct, you feel great and it is reinforced in your memory. Or if your analysis was not correct, you go "wow! I missed that" and it is _still_ reinforced in your memory. Also, very important, _you_ need to do the analysis and find the mistakes, _not_ the engine. Use the engine afterwards for checking, but if you let the engine find the better move you won't remember it.
+1 the recommendation by ThrillerFan and B1ZMARK for books, it's also my preferred method. Here's why....
Videos tend to be low quality. It's possible to glean some information from them, just not the opening! So for example in one of Eric Rosen's videos he is going over the Stafford Gambit (yuk), and at some point he is looking at the lichess database to see what moves white has played. That's the lesson! Not "play the Stafford Gambit", but "check your opening in the database for the _opponent's_ moves". Blink and you'll miss it, but there is a valuable nugget in that video.
The reason books are generally (not always) high quality is because they are expensive to produce. The publisher has to pay the author and the printer, they want to get their money back and make a profit, so they insist on quality. Decades ago, when videos were a new thing, they had the same financial constraints, just in a different format.
Nowadays it's different. There is print on demand for books (useless), or database dumps (I have a database), there is youtube for videos (mostly useless), even chessable you have some amateurs just dumping a pgn file without any understanding. There is still some quality available in any format, but you have to be really choosy. So I choose to pay for my database, I choose to pay for my books. I keep an eye on youtube but don't really waste much time on it. On chessable there is both good and bad stuff. Anyway I don't think spaced repetition works for remembering openings, so for me chessable is just another format of data. I make a note of what is being done there but for now I'm sticking to my books+database. Books for learning a new opening, database for checking the latest games I have played in my usual openings.
@Preusseagro - Yes it's true. There are good books, which mostly have some answer. You might not like all the lines given, but they won't be bad. Then there are bad books, which give some outright bad lines, or more often they neglect to give the best lines for the other side. But as for lines you like or don't like, the more you know about an opening, the more likely that you will need more than one book on it.
So far in the (free) openings videos I have seen, not once has the presenter identified the critical position. Listen for it. Have you ever heard in a video "This is the best line for the other side, so it's the one we are going to spend the most time on."? I haven't heard that. Instead what I hear is, "They can do this, if they do you can play (some lame moves)", followed by some hand-waving and then "Anyway most of your opponents will be surprised and fall into one of the other lines we looked at earlier." That's if they cover the best moves at all. The only place you get the critical lines is in paid content, and not always then.
Well that was a bad experience with a book, for sure. Did you ever find a video that covered the Sicilian Wing Gambit well enough for you to play it?
Forgot to mention
The problems on books are they dont have always the lines you wann play
Same goes for videos but since those are shorter you would expect that at least
Most books on openings are Repertoire books, and you need to research the book before just randomly buying a book. Trying to get a single book repertoire and have it have ALL the lines you prefer is ludicrious. You are best off getting books that are either not repertoire and more objective (i.e. Closed Sicilian, Move by Move, which covers all the lines, 6.Be3, 6.f4, 6.Nge2, etc), or repertoire ideas on a specific opening - for example - 7 Ways to Smash the Sicilian covers Open Sicilian lines while say, "How to Beat the Sicilian Defense" covers the Rossolimo, Moscow, and I think a deferred c3-Sicilian against 2...e6, but not totally sure. Other books cover say, the c3-Sicilian, like a big yellow book that Sveshnikov wrote.
You cannot just pick a random Sicilian book and expect them all to cover your desired lines. Research the book before you buy it! Still beats Videos or, even work, Chessable.
Do you recommend learning openings with videos, or is it better to get a chessable course? what other options can you suggest?
I think you can watch some videos and use the engine to explore the opening. Thinking moves that you will play in this position and see what the computer will respond to for your moves. By doing that you should be able to have some idea to play this opening at your level. And by playing more and more you will have a better understanding of it.
Of course, if you are like 1800+ you may study some theory. But again I think using a chess engine is more than enough unless you really don't understand the idea of the moves and in that case, you better buy a book or a course.
Do you recommend learning openings with videos, or is it better to get a chessable course? what other options can you suggest?