Is GothamChess Overrated?

Yeah, there are educational channels with tons of content... not sure I've ever heard someone recommend gothamchess for educational content.

And it's also a smaller audience... most people don't go to YouTube to learn, they go to be entertained. Even if your content was excellent, you'd have fewer subs than some meme-boi

He is the greatest youtuber !! Ho can you even say that?? I blundered a lot first but now I am playing good!! Guess The Elo is the best too!! He has covered a lot of educational content and aren't you even seeing chess steps ???? Don't blame him, he has covered almost everything to be good at this game ! He has so much educational videos! Have you watched or bothered to even check his playlist and opening videos...

SEe his opening videos, it will help anyone!!!!!!

Whoa whoa whoa, Michael Jordan could play the heck outta basketball. Shakespeare wrote plays that have lasted centuries. What's Gotham's claim to fame? Having his channel boosted by Hikaru. That's it.

And look, I'm glad he's successful, he's starting a family so he'll make good use of the money, but to compare him to people who were actually talented... lol

1200

Oh my goodness, this thread degenerated quickly. Personally I find him a bit overrated, but he's alright. Don't be a bandwagon hater or a bandwagon fanboy and quit arguing on the internet.

I enjoy his videos and I've learned from some of them. 

No he is not 🤷🏻‍♀️

What else is the internet for but pointless arguing about things people really don't have a clue about?!

Very nice playing Great speed - agile fingers! That has great potential.

Best comment I have read in a long time. Well said mate!

Saying that you learned something from it doesn't make it an educational video, people improve from watching all sorts of chess youtube, just by being exposed to chess and looking at GMs moves is enough for a low rated player to improve a couple hundred elo points

just looking at gm moves doesnt help.

you have to be able to understand them.

Don't demand like this, it makes you look like an azsswhole, and I don't have to prove anything, but I did improve from some 600 to 1200 ish just by playing and looking at moves... so that's example #1 for you... for instance I didn't really know how powerful it could be to fianchetto a bishop or having your rooks connected, or a solid pawn structure ... looking at the harmony in which GMs (strong players in general) place their pieces might make you want to copy that in your own games... obviously if you have someone teaching you or explaining the ideas behind it you're going to improve faster and better, but doesn't mean that you can't learn just by looking at it and then trying to copy it by trial and error in your own games, because i (and many other people) have

I like the short response of "prove it" from @ShouldBeABreeze as that claim does seem a bit outreaching. Yes, studying GM games can help a lot (especially when they are annotated), but it takes a lot more than just this to improve and although some might improve hundreds of points by this, not everyone will improve that much by doing only that. 

If you want to be an Olympic runner, then should you take up jogging? It sounds like something you'd have to do eventually if you want to become a runner, but would you tell a 2-year-old toddler to take up jogging? xD Of course not; they have to learn to crawl and then walk first. Chess is similar (as most things in life) as you have to take things one step at a time (pun intended). 

Although GM games might be like jogging to an experienced chess player, not everyone is there yet and it might be more useful to do other things primarily - things like tactics puzzles, theoretical endgame practice, opening principles, studying positional motifs, studying pawn structures, studying your own games, learning an opening etc. 

Notice that some of these in the list are not "toddler things" - for example studying pawn structures isn't too common below 1800 and even a 2000 might not be always making the correct pawn structure assessments. 

There is nothing wrong with @ShouldBeABreeze saying "prove it." 

p.s. I don't know if an intended reference or not, but IM Jeremy Silman also used the expression "prove it" in his book How To Reassess Your Chess, 4th Edition; perhaps they were simply referencing that, but even if they weren't, they don't come across badly to me.

You can like whatever you want, right or wrong still makes him sound like an azsshole lol

"Do you have any evidence to back this up?", "Are you able to prove what you're claiming?" are much more civilized ways to get the same message across (not that I am the most polite person, but that's besides the point) but fanboys do tend to get hostile whenever levy is mildly criticized lmao

I also never said it is the best way to improve, if you read I said that there are much better ways to improve, my claim is simple: I just said that the argument "I gained this much points by watching levy" is not enough to qualify his channel as an educational channel... he may or may not be an educator (i'm sure he's worked as a coach before, so he most likely is), he might have some educational content, but that statement alone doesn't mean jackshiit since, as I mentioned, me and many others have improved a bit by looking at GMs games... obviously if you have annotations or someone explaining it is a lot easier to learn, but that's not the argument here

Also, the obvious doesn't have to be proven... it goes without saying that when you're trying to get better at something, looking at pros and experts doing is better than trying from scratch without any help or guide whatsoever... but for someone with basic interpretation skills, that by no means means it is a better tool than having a coach sit with you and explain step by step

As far as pawn structures, I'm talking simple concepts .... what i mean is that when I was some 600ish I would think that this

was better than this, because I have an extra pawn