Can Diamond Membership Really Improve Your Chess?

Ok

It honestly sounds like you are being serious

I couldn't tell it was actually sarcasm.

yes it has helped me

 I want a membership to win real diamonds.

I think there's a lot of good material, and I don't mind paying for it, but does it REALLY make you better?

I've been studying endgames and opening, with the idea of understanding how they are linked up, and I definitely think I've learned quite a bit in both areas.  Yet, my last several games were all won or lost on tactics in the middlegame.  And these tactics are generally on the three-ply level--"I go there, he goes there, I go there," and it would not take a genius to realize this new position is far better than the one I settled for.

Now, what are you going to tell me?  Look for forks?  Look for pins?  Look for discoveries?  Look for overloaded pieces?  Look for checks?  Or one of my favorites--the reverso--don't assume a piece is going to be pinned when it really isn't!  Yeah.  I already know about all that.  But still I miss them all the time.

So I don't know how much the instructional materials really help, even though they are high quality.  They help a bit, probably.  But mostly, no amount of training is going to make a slow runner fast--sure, you can get your fat butt to a six-minute mile with a lot of work (more work than most people are willing to do, btw)--but you are never, ever getting to 4:30 (no matter how much you work)--and that isn't even actually fast by competitive standards.  It's about the same in chess.

Then probably go ask Mr Beast

I respect your opinion, but I think that anything can be done if you set your mind to it.

That's a nice sentiment, but how many IMs have put their mind on being a GM?  Pretty much all of them.  They spend years on it and mostly fail.  These are people who can play ten boards at once blindfold against ordinary players and win all games, then set the positions up from memory and tell each opponent what they did wrong.  I have seen this from people who were "only" 2300.  And they will never be GMs, not even IMs.

Same in every field of competition.  You can be a high school star, or a college star, and never get to the pros.  Happens all the time.

If you shoot 71 average at golf, you are not good enough for the PGA.  So many examples.

It's not even sad.  It's just realistic.

You can improve your chess with and without membership. The only thing is that with membership, you can get access to more lessons (and they aren't useless) and some more useful facilities here. Membership would only help you improve your chess a bit faster. The rest lies on how much you play and try to progress.

Yes... you don't need it though. Having access to unlimited lessons, puzzles and analysis helps for sure. But there are loads of free resources online and in the end you have to be the one that puts in the work, no one can do it for you.

Puzzles, which the subscription unlocks, are widely considered to be the most effective way to train these skills.  Particularly, doing the same puzzles over and over so you start to build a repertoire of tactical patterns that you can recognize at a glance is a good way to short-circuit time needed for calculation.

Being able to see tactical patterns quickly is also really helpful with multiple-move problems, because you can see an almost-pattern and say "But for that piece sitting there, I could do X cool thing.  What do I have to do to get it out of the way?"

Improving requires first having an idea of what new things to try, and then practicing them and making them work in games.  Of course the courses only help with the first part of this, but that's still necessary for improvement!

It can. But there are lots of free alternatives that work just as well (if not better).

There's excellent free content out there, and a lot more excellent paid content.  But, if you're willing to pay for high-quality content, memberships on here provide an awful lot for the price compared to other paid options.

Diamond membership does not improve your chess.

Only if you take advantage of what is offered by diamond will you improve in chess.

If you committed self-harm on the mastery lesson called "Improve your technique" then you would probably change your opinion. It is the most effective torture method in the chess.com lessons pool.

Some of the lessons are insanely good, it's basically a gold mine... I learned a ton from the lessons and they helped me return to Chess easily after a 10+ year break and then to improve. Saying they are useless is plain wrong and delusional. Maybe for you personally they can't help but I think they are extremely well done. Some obviously better than others.

Working on your chess will.

As someone who bought it, no. 

you may not be making the best use of your diamond membership.

@ntzt has done much more than you have.

I used to have diamond membership for about a year.

but you can by competing in a forum competition