Is vote chess a good way to learn?

I thought maybe discussing with other players would help me think about a next move in a game but I'm not sure how vote chess works and what group would be appropriate to join to vote in. Does anyone have any suggestions of a group/club that would be suitable for someone around 1187 (daily) to join and discuss moves?

Thanks.

This club is very organized with vote chess, and has never lost or drawn one yet. The thing is, I’m not sure if it’s open to all players, but it may be- https://www.chess.com/club/scary-ninjas

Thanks. It was open pending admins acceptance so I'm in that now. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the tip.

Ok. Thanks. I'll have a look. There's possibly one out there.

Thanks Yakuza. I'm sure there must be one out there aimed at discussing moves with the aim of learning. I'll let you know if I find one. Otherwise, I wonder if maybe its possible/easy to create one and what's involved.  I'll keep you updated.

Well, you may want to see if there is a club who plays vote chess for an opening that you play.  As an example, the Caro-Kann.  The nice thing is that you can participate in the votes for moves in a game and then analyze your moves against those chosen by consensus.  It may help you to learn why your move was more superior/inferior to others as the game progresses.  Annotating your own games is one way to improve.   What openings do you like to play?

Vote Chess can be fun, but it is not a good way to learn.  The reasons are simple:

1)  There are usually more lower rated players voting than stronger players.  Getting 90 1200s discussing moves is pointless.  They will simply outnumber the 10 2000+ players in the group.

2)  Even among stronger players, style can come into play.  This is especially true in opening choices.  Worse, if you have 2 groups that "split the vote" between 2 equally good choices (i.e. a positional choice and a tactical one), the likelihood of a 3rd choice (which is usually a mistake) winning is very high.

3)  As the game goes on, stronger players will get frustrated by the mistakes that win the vote and leave the game.  This means that you are left with the worst players in the late middle and endgame.

In short, Vote Chess is a bit like playing blitz or bullet:  do it to have fun, but do not expect to improve doing it.

The best way to prevent any of this from happening is to enforce a vote call based off a consensus, and boot the ones that ignore it to prevent unwanted moves.

It might give you insight into how other people think; however, I'm not sure it will help you learn or get better. And, as noted above, the level, experience and number of participants also makes a big difference.

And that is a great way to see blunders happen every other move.  A consensus among 1200 players will still be at 1200 strength.  It only takes 1 2000 to point out that all of them are wrong, yet Vote Chess will drown out the superior line by sheer numbers.

There is a reason that virtually all Master vs World games favor the master (even when Masters are in the World group!).  The strength of the group is equivalent to the mode of their ratings.

This is why the person officiating the vote calls should be someone of a high level.

Vote chess is a good way to enjoy chess with your teammates and have fun.

I have involved myself in many vote chess games in the past, I had lots of fun but hardly learnt anything new.

VC would help beginners more than higher rated players.

Ridiculous.  

- Votechess is highly instructive when played on a good team

- Your premise is just bad...a group of votechess players at any rating level plays significantly better than an individual at the same rating

- Outright blunders are actually quite rare in votechess with any team that has more than a handful of players...inaccuracies are quite common, though

- Master vs. Many votechess games are the lowest common denominator of votechess, and should in no way be taken as a good example of how votechess is supposed to function

P.S. Yakuza Ronin is incorrect...votes are visible, and a club admin can remove any player from the team that is not voting by that club's rules.

No!! Definately not!

I checked one of your random game.

. I saw serious problem in opening such as 2...c6  3... f6 within first 5 moves. You definately need a good opening repertoire. A few good books or CD, or youtube videos will be necessary to build basic understanding of development of pieces, opening etc. 

Train tactics for middle games

Do endgame study.

Votechess is like a joke for study. Every player (even engines) change in mind/plan  depending on allocated time and searched depth. 

It all depends on the players. A good vote chess team will have some strong players who are active in leading the discussion, and good discipline in the voting. For example, a team may have rules that nobody votes until 24 hours before the deadline (so there's time for discussion), and nobody votes for a move that hasn't been suggested in the discussion.

You won't learn much from VC games if your team has no discussion or discipline, but not all teams are like that. My recommendation is to look at some completed VC games, click the "archive" tab, and go through the entire game move by move, checking for the quality of the discussion. When you find a club with a VC team that impresses you, join it. 

Here's an example of what VC at its finest can look like. Both teams had great discussion and discipline, and were led by strong players who were happy to share their thoughts. Check it out if you like.

https://www.chess.com/votechess/game/120456?mv=0&san=e5&activePagination=archive

Exactly.  I defy anyone to read through the move by move comments of a well played votechess game and then try to claim it is not instructive.  Heck, I have been on teams where titled members have told the team they learned something significant and completely new from the research and discussion done.

There's only one scourge and downside to votechess at all, and that is engine use...but it stands to reason that if 10% of players are trying to use engines overall on the site (and this would be a conservative estimate), then any large enough votechess club is bound to have a few engine users.  The key is to ferret them out and remove them diligently as they join games.

It is true that votechess will help you significantly more at, say, the 1300-1900 range, but everyone can benefit.

Don't use the arrow keys to go through the moves. Instead, click on each move under the "archive" tab. That will bring up all the comments for that move.

Seems like good fun - but in terms of time, maybe better with a good book.

There are 2300 members of Team Australia.  ~75 of them are over 2000.  If you can get roughly 200 of the entire club playing in any given Vote Chess game, and 5 of the 2000+ rated players are the only one making comments, you are likely to get something from it.  Based on previous experience, that is not very likely.

I'll give you an example you can go back and look up:  When Anna Rudolf played the World, there was a move played by the World (I was on the team) that was a clear blunder.  Why was it played?  Anna had interviewed Fabiano who had looked at the position for 2 seconds an said he would look to see if moves like X would work.  The lower rated players all chimed in with "Fabi said this move, so it cannot be wrong".  Several of us pointed out that it doesn't work and is a clear blunder - yet it won the vote by a wide margin.

Later, in that same game, there were 2 equally good ways to hold a draw.  One was a tactical simplification, the other was a positional squeeze that simply killed the position and neither side would be able to make any progress.  Both of these moves got roughly 25% of the vote.  The move that won was a pawn move that gave Anna counterplay and allowed her to go on to win an easily played endgame.

You can see these examples happen all of the time in VC games.  If you limit the choices to only moves the stronger players on your team suggest, you can avoid many mistakes, but in terms of instructional value, you would be better off just playing some games with any one of those stronger players and analyzing the games with them.

Unless there has been a major change in VC recently, this is not how it works.

Reality often is/

And winning the lottery is a great way to fix all your financial problems.  So why doesn't everyone just do that?

Completely incorrect.  A group of 10 1200s will play like a 1200.  You do not get stronger when playing as a committee.  The only real benefit you get to the committee is that it is harder to play impulsively.

In perhaps the largest VC game ever played, Kasparov beat over 50,000 players (including many other stronger grandmasters) playing the other team.  If somehow adding more players together increased their strength, that should not have happened.  Yet, the same thing happens in virtually every Master vs the World game.

In restricted club games, this is true.  In vote chess games open to the public, not so much.  However, even in club games, it is not uncommon to see howlers sneak in when the players are 1) not using engines (which they are not suppose to do!) and 2) are all (or mostly) sub-2000.

If you have 1-2 very strong players who provide analysis and the rest of the team votes on only the moves they suggest, it is not so much vote chess as it is a more complicated version of hand-and-brain.  Once again, you would be better served (in terms of instructional value) by watching a strong IM or GM stream where they ask the audience to pick between 2 moves (Marc Esserman does this quite often, if you are looking for an example).

Democracy is suppose to function by picking the best of all options.  Ideally, it does that.  In reality, not so much.  The problem is all these darn humans!

And yes, for club games, having an active admin can help mitigate the problems.  That doesn't change the fact that it is about as useful (in terms of instructional value) as blitz or bullet.  Sure, you can get something from it - but the chances are low and the time investment is high.  In short, the improvement:time ratio is much better when doing other things.