Chess Videos are amazing

I'm sure a lot of you have been using a lot of them, but chess videos (here and on youtube) are amazing! I've been watching a lot more of the instruction-type videos and am amazed at how much benefit I get out of them. 

Any of you folks find that videos gave you significant improvement in your game? 

I love watching chess videos. They make us feel like we are learning without any of the improvement. Chess is a performance endeavor. To improve you have to practice performing. More knowledge is only so useful. You can spend 4 years at a university learning about your career. Then you will learn more in 1 month on the job than you learned in 4 years at university. I will watch a chess video and really enjoy it, but 2 days later I can't tell you what I remember from it. But if you used the same knowledge in your own game, you will remember that forever.

There are good chess videos and bad.  Good ones tend to focus on a theme and come in sets of 3-6 videos related to a topic.  This is the only reason I pay for a Chess.com memebership, because I can repeatedly study the video archives.  Videos by Danny Rensch are excellent.  Unfortunately he stopped really producing videos worth the name, but his old ones are really good.  I don't agree they can't help you improve.  They are an excellent study tool.

I disagree that you don't improve. I definitely improved after watching videos. I did however re watch them multiple times.

I was half tongue-in-cheek. You can improve with videos, but you have to put in the work. The difference between a video and a book is the video keeps playing even if you are not paying attention, so it's easy to keep seeing ideas from games that you missed, and you get a little rush of excitement over and over. A lot of people, I think, notice the repeated rush of excitement and think they are really getting something out of it, but the truth for a lot of people is, they would get the same feeling if they watched cat videos or conspiracy theory videos. I may be wrong of course.

Yes i agree, i extremely videos that deal with the treatment of various opening themes, gambits and the rave of the moment exchange sacrifices.

Of course, you have to play/practice to implement what you learned.

However, I do think people miss a lot when they don't rewatch good chess videos. It's no different than seeing a game or new tactic the first time - how many more times do you have to see it before you remember it? And after that, you STILL have to see it a few more times before it's ingrained so you can flexibly use it.

I used to be one of those 'all-tactics' guys, but after a pretty low level (like not even 1200 in 5-min blitz), I wasn't beating anyone, and if I did, it was solely due to 'swindles' where you get stupidly lucky and find a saving tactic in an otherwise lost position. Was massively frustrating since I knew I was tactically much better than the opponent but when I plugged the game I lost into the engine, HE had all the tactical shots, and I had like 1-2 chances to equalize with tactics, and that's it.

I really avoided studying openings since a lot of folks on this forum and elsewhere said it's a waste of time, but at least for me now, it's definitely NOT a waste of time. In fact, it's been a lot more useful for me than even endgames and tactics, likely because I've done a lot of tactics. Videos have def been the best way to learn the openings - I still run thru engine analysis here and there, but those videos show you the best club-level HUMAN playable lines that are also fun. Great stuff.