KeSetoKaiba AMA but not really...

Have you ever read a book that you like to read again and again, like every few years, for example?

Good question.

The Bible is a good answer I've read that cover to cover and it is always worth revisiting.

However, that is technically 66 books, so I'll also give more to your question

I actually have a lot of books I like to read and perhaps re-read. I have always been super selective with which books I decide to read, but because of this: I typically love the books I choose and then buy them, add them to my bookcase and then re-read them when I like (or more often, re-read sections as I keep books mostly for reference).

Here are a few non-chess books which I've read cover to cover at least twice:

- Dressing The Man: Mastering The Art of Permanent Fashion (written by Alan Flusser). This is a book about suits, sport coats, dress shoes, ties, dress shirts and things of this nature and how to wear them in a timeless way which harmonizes with the rest of your outfit as well as your body type, body shape, facial tones and things like this.

- A Billion Wicked Thoughts (written by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam). This is a book which may seem a bit "academic" at times, but it is also a fairly straight-forward read which is highly insightful. The book addresses human desire and uses online search queries as statistics (mostly *orn statistics [not corn]), but does so in a respectful manner which doesn't reveal personal identity.

- The Spy Who Came For Christmas (written by David Morrell). This is a fictional book, but uses great imagery and is a nice book to read if you like suspense, secret agent-type of stories and especially if you love imagery. This book has such vivid descriptions that you feel like you are there on the streets of Santa Fe, New Mexico during the snowy Christmas mountains.

whats with the suit? making videos at work or trying to look serious?

Great question, but my answer is actually neither of those. Wearing a sport coat is what I usually wear when I leave the house; it is just what I'm comfortable in. This is what I usually wear at my local chess club as well and this is what I decided to wear for most of my chess videos too.

you look like a decent person, not for the suit.. i'm just good at reading people..

I wish you the best of luck with your career

Thanks @mf410827

He definitely is and I'm like you, I'm good at reading people as well, I generally know what kind of people I like and what kind of people I'd rather stay away from.

What is your opinion on YGO's meta and its effect on how fun competitive YGO is?

Whats a good middlegame course for advanced players? Im gettinf a freind one for Christmas.

Yugioh is an ever-changing game as new cards come out and new strategies become viable. Meta tends to be the best decks for a reason and the underlining math and ideas behind it (especially with counterstrategies) I find interesting. However, the fun days of Yugioh are mostly behind me now (as they have been for years). Link monsters was the last straw for me and the meta has been too overpowered from then on. Nowadays, Konami just seems to be giving EVERY deck overpowered meta support and it basically becomes a battle of which deck is more overpowered than another and how fast those cards can be played; it doesn't even feel like the same game.

I much prefer the older decks. I do have Yugioh Master Duel (on Steam) but I seldom play it and I do have Yugioh Duel Links (on Steam as well). Duel Links I play slightly more often, but this is a slightly different game even though it "feels" close to Yugioh as I knew it.

Summary of how I felt about Yugioh's progression:

- (Original) Duel Monsters: I liked a lot and was a great show and card game.

- GX: Also a great anime and expanded the card game in a good way. Jaden's Elemental Heroes helped expand Fusions which we saw in the first series (like Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon) and Yugioh GX still felt like Yugioh even though the original usually started with 8000 Life Points, but GX started at 4000 Life Points.

- 5Ds: I didn't like too much; the 5Ds show I still never watched all of it. I liked the episodes in the Wild West and a few other things, but I found the Speed Dueling and "card games on motorcycles" unnecessary. The real problem I hated at the time were Synchro Monsters though. It took me a long time to be okay with them, but when they first came out, it just took over the meta and the speed flow of duels became way faster and way more special summoning per turn as the norm.

- Zexal: I watched all of this anime and it was really good. It wasn't anywhere near as good as Duel Monsters or GX, but I liked it. Number/Xyz monsters having overlay units just seemed like "counters" in the original Duel Monsters. I thought the meta was still decent at this point in time and this helped balance out Synchros a bit.

- Arc-V: Ugh, I only watched a few episodes, but Pendulum monsters just destroyed the meta because now special summoning was way too easy again.

- Vrains: I never watched, but Link Monsters just destroyed what meta the Pendulum monsters didn't destroy. Yugioh felt like the same card game after Zexal (although evolved), but Pendulum I really disliked, but tried to fight off; Link was just the last straw for me.

- Sevens: I didn't watch, but looks like a different game again. I liked Sevens in Duel Links because it is like its own variant (like chess and chess variants). It is so different that it feels like it's own different game just with similarities.

Unsure as to whether this question has been asked yet, but would you consider a long form series explaining pawn structures for U1000, U1500, and U2000 players?

U1000’s explanation could be as simple as explaining what in the hell a pawn structure is, U1500 could be explaining what all the common ones are and the very basics of what to do in them, and U2000 could be a more in-depth look into pawn structures that aren’t uncommon.

Same thing goes to color complexes, endame theory, opening principles, middlegame tactics, positional play, pawn pushes, piece play, just kind of a general overlook on all the facets of chess, as those sorts of things are by and large never explained to a chess player as YT does a terrible job explaining anything but trendy but dubious openings and hardly any chess player dare to look any deeper.

I am not really experienced with online courses, so I don't have any recommendations. For middlegames, I do recommend two books for intermediate to advanced players though:

- Pawn Power In Chess by Hans Kmoch

- How To Reassess Your Chess, 4th Edition by IM Jeremy Silman

The first book is more concerned with pawn structure and the second book is more concerned with imbalances, but both are really good books for teaching middlegame concepts. If you aren't sure which to get, How To Reassess Your Chess is probably better for a wider range of audience. If your friend plays the Benoni Defense though, Pawn Power In Chess might be especially good though because they have a lot of the book dedicated to Benoni pawn structures and many examples in the book come from this opening.

Good question and I don't think this has been asked yet although I've had similar requests for in-depth series of videos on other advanced topics too (like the imbalances IM Jeremy Silman frequently talks about).

When I started YouTube about a year and a half ago, I had the same observation you had. Most people on YouTube aren't in-depth with topics like that. I thought that could be a niche of mine; is this an undiscovered audience?

Sadly, I don't think it is. I used to give those "in-depth" videos on Twitch and upload to YouTube, but the problem was that being in-depth naturally makes the videos longer and it is difficult to give a quality video in anything less than 30 minutes; people just don't click longer videos like this often. What is worse is that the "in-depth" topics aren't as popular because there are WAY more beginners in chess than advanced players. I learned through the early days of my channel that in-depth videos like this are difficult to build a large audience with. (Sigh)

Just to illustrate this concept is true and it isn't just my inexperience and small channel size from back then, here are two popular chess channel by two strong titled players:

https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM GM Daniel "Danya" Naroditsky has one of the best chess YouTube channels out there (in my opinion) for quality content and especially for intermediate to advanced level. He currently has 392k subscribers. I'm one of them.

https://www.youtube.com/@GothamChess/videos IM Levy Rozman (GothamChess) currently has 4.42M subscribers. We can see that his wider range of audience (and even more simple for beginners or even non-chess players) appeals to more people.

I respect both of these chess players and what they've done with their channels, but the numbers reveal that it just isn't as beneficial to give these long (even if quality) videos because the audience doesn't like them as much.

With that said, I still try to put a lot of value and quality into my own videos and nothing against GothamChess, but his channel content just isn't what I want for my own channel. It isn't my personality to be jumping out of my chair after every few minutes. My personality is more closely like IM Eric Rosen https://www.youtube.com/@eric-rosen and we can see that his channel currently has 654k subscribers, but I believe this is largely because he combines the "in-depth" content (like Danya) with entertainment videos (like GothamChess).

As for my own growing channel, I'd still like to have quality and in-depth videos, but I also have to respect what is popular and what most people want. Maybe I could take some of these really "in-depth" video ideas and try to break them up into several shorter videos or something (sort of what I do now), but it is a learning process on my part to learn how to balance in-depth quality with being entertaining enough to actually reach an audience. Hopefully, this makes sense

Thanks