Should We Study Games of IM and FM

I believe their games are worth studying. Maybe even better than games of GM. The famous GothamChess is an IM.. The famous book author is an IM.

out of my league

IM Nezh beat GM Tal

IMs and FMs often execute plans and ideas that are clearer and more straightforward than those of top grandmasters. This can make their games easier to understand for improving players.

Gotham is the last thing I'd study.

Well, yes, I find IM Eric Rosens Speedrun easier to understand than GM Daniel Naroditskys Speedruns. They are both very useful though.

Gotham is mainly famous for being an entertainer. That said it makes sense to study games of lower rated players because you can learn how to punish mistakes.

Another useful source for this is when strong GMs play lesser players in open tournaments. When you see a game in the 25 move range, those are good to get some of the basic ideas of what one player or the other can't do, and why.

I got fed up with Gotham's clickbaiting videos where everything is the worst or best or amazing etc...

Gotham publishes videos daily.

Thus, unsurprisingly, its not always brilliant.

For that matter Hikaru does the same with the same result.

Study NM-s or IM-s? Waste of time. They suck.

the longer the elo gap between you and masters, the lesser the benefit you take from them. by benefit i mean understanding the ideas. but still you can slowly build an intuition database by just watching their games.

you can not truly understand why a master makes his move, it may look like an opening principle or just recapturing for balance, but he may just be remembering a historical game and trying to setup a similar position. you can still see some reasoning on his moves but at some point it wont just add up and you will be confused.. that is the moment that you should realize you were all wrong from the beginning about his idea.

to sum it up: i suggest you to study with closer elos.. but you will eventually get bad habits from them, the habits which keep them from improving.. its a double edge sword.

That makes no sense. Lower Elos make random moves half the time, so there's nothing to study.

Instead of that you should learn the basics of strategy, endgames, tactics, and openings. That way you can make some sense of high level games (especially the ones with annotations).

by lower elos it was referring IMs and FMs as the title asks about it. for non-masters there are surely many things to study from masters..

You said it's not possible to understand masters. The letter 'm' in IM and FM stands for master.

You ended your post by saying to study "closer elos" ... which would be untitled players.

It was for GMs

title asks if we should study IMs and FMs so they mean only GM games are important or not

I was trying to say you can not truly understand GMs ideas.. but you may study with lower elos (FMs and IMs)

Titles/Masters start with CM (Candidate Master) / Elo 2200. Technically even lower for the rare female players.

If you want to understand GM ideas, well just check out Naroditskys Speedruns. Towards the end he faces opponents he considers GM strength, and he explains his thoughts during and after the game.

What books explain the master's ideas? Other than

Chess Informants Best 1000 Games. I'm comfortable with Chess Informants Style of Annotations.

I found this

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1015261