The Site Could Use More Balanced Content

I've been a diamond member for 4 months now and I wanted to share some feedback.  I've put a lot of time on here trying to learn to be a better player, and while I have made some progress, I have found the content to cater to much better players than myself, and the vast majority of the content on here, the videos and the lessons, are geared toward players of an advanced level, expert or better I would say.  I've put in a lot of time on here, 2 to 3 hours a day over this time on average, and don't have a hell of a lot to show for it. 

The content is at the grandmaster level, whatever the topic, let's show you how grandmasters play.  I do not ever expect to play anywhere close to this, nor do I ever expect an opponent I would play to play anywhere near close to this level.  I bought a one year membership so I'm going to be sticking with it, the problem just isn't the level it's that all of these videos basically just go through grandmaster games where what I am looking for is someone to teach me not just annotate extremely complex games.

Much better would be lessons which demonstrate the concepts that the videos purport to teach rather than just showing some somewhat related grandmaster moves from a single game.  The real lessons, which I've completed, were helpful but I've long run out of them and am down to the games with the few lessons strapped on at the end.

This lack really stood out when I found Chess Vibes on YouTube, man what a difference, Nelson actually cares about lower rated players and I learn more from one of his videos than I do with a dozen or more of the ones on here.  He only has a couple hundred though so that won't last forever and coming back to this site involves a huge disappointment.

Please put more content up for lower rated players, for the many of us who aspire to be mid-level but will never get there by being segregated to very advanced fare.  This is like taking a little kid and putting them in university in a highly technical program, they will only come away confused and disappointed.  Let's get this site appealing to the everyday player not just the experts and masters.

I don't currently have a membership, but I used to.

I sort of remember that the videos had a recommended rating beside them or something. Do they still do that?

And yeah, I remember a lot of them were for players around 1500-1800.

I don't remember seeing much of that and I've started at the back end with both the lessons and the videos and working my way towards the present.  It's not really so much about whether players will understand a video, as the biggest problem by far is that we are watching some great games but having them placed infinitely out of context with our own level.  The exception would  the members' games analysis, which are moves we might make or our opponent might make, or at least ones in the same universe.  This is why I mentioned more balanced content in the title, and it only makes sense to do so given that most people on here, the target market, are of modest ability.  

For instance, I play a lot of games as the engine and playing the best moves against a wide variety of computer opponents of various skill and don't really find playing the highest levels ones very helpful, although on the other hand playing against players of your level or a little higher will show you how to best beat this type of player.  Someone taking games of players close to your level and showing you the mistakes you and your opponent make, and showing you how to correct them, is more like it, and there's precious little of this on here and it's almost all geared toward teaching players already masters how to get to the next level.  If you want to attract more people, make the content more attractive to more people is the message here.

Using games of players near the student's rating is neat idea.

I understand why GM games are used though... I mean, with chess or anything, it's usually good to see examples from the best players... provided of course the analysis of those games is something the student is ready to learn. A GM analyzing one of their own games at a GM level isn't useful for a new player of course.

I wonder how useful these are to more experienced players who are below the level of expert, from purely a technical perspective.  I actually have two beefs here, the fact that these are master games and higher as well as just using a single game for a lesson, which can be helpful but isn't the ideal way to teach concepts.  So we see a GM get in a bind against another GM for instance and plays some slick moves, we can all learn a little here but precious little for most of us, especially versus taking a variety of positions where you show how to defend rather than having to watch a whole game and get one or two key moves only.  

The other issue is one of relevancy, and even if I could remember these positions and the suggested moves this particular position just won't really come up ever for the majority of us not just newer players, where what we need instead is to learn how to better address our own weaknesses which these GMs don't have and take better advantage of the weaknesses of our opponents which the opponents don't have.  The games simply are not relevant enough and therefore neither are the lessons, and we could use more relevancy

If you want my opinion, books work a lot better man. Maybe read some reviews, see what you like. I suggest considering Winning Chess Strategies by Seirawan (better for players on the newer end) and Modern Chess Strategy by Pachman (better if you're a bit more experienced but still haven't properly studied strategy yet).

As for videos, once you get much above 1800 OTB / whatever that is online (2000 I guess?) the  lessons in the videos are too basic, even if they're using GM games. Probably 99% of the videos I can find online will be teaching stuff that's too basic for me to care about... and the ones done by players who don't have a title usually have things that are wrong or misleading (IMO).

(Oh, I guess there are a lot of videos on openings... obviously I don't know all openings, but I couldn't care less about that stuff and wouldn't watch them anyway)

Yeah, you need to be taught the fundamentals, because those apply to all positions.

A typical first lesson (which is too easy for you, but bear with me for a second) is placing a piece in the middle of an empty board and asking the student to count how many squares it can move to. First of all you test that they know the rules, but you're also laying the foundation for the idea that pieces have value because of their mobility. Queen controls more squares therefore is the better piece. The higher the mobility, the higher chance the piece will come into contact with important points later in the game.

Sounds simple enough, but all manner of advanced strategic ideas use this as the basis. Bad pawn structure? Exchange sacrifices? Weak color complexes? It all goes back to piece activity. So you start with the basics, and then work towards more specific and complex ideas. Book do a  much better job of this.

I actually did get some chess books back in the day as I've puttered around with the game off and on over the last 50 years but didn't find the books that helpful because I'd have to break out a board and play the moves on that which is very annoying as I can't visualize.  With the videos I can at least have them play the moves out for me.  I really loved the lessons though, the videos not so much. Thanks for the comment on piece activity, this is pretty basic though although still pretty important and the material could focus more on this I would say.  This is more down my alley as I am not going to remember what was played in a GM game but I do get the idea of increasing the power of my pieces and I am going to ponder even more on that after your great comment!

Here's a fun little system that might help a bit. The non-pawns have a few stages of gaining value (it's possible for 1 move to do multiple things or skip a stage):

First stage:
Move the piece off of its original square
Bonus if it influences the center (pinning an enemy knight is a way to influence the center)
Bonus if it's not blocking your other pieces (This can be tricky. If you know you want a rook on d1 later, then maybe putting a knight or bishop on d2 early in the game is not ideal. If you know you want to develop the bishop to b2, then maybe developing the knight to c3 is not ideal)

Second Stage:
Influencing empty squares on the opponent's side of the board. A classic example is a rook on an open file, a bishop on a long diagonal, or a knight on an outpost.
Bonus if the piece is defended or can't easily be attacked.
Empty squares are useful because you can use them to infiltrate into the opponent's side later. You're also making it harder for them to maneuver their pieces (a queen can't move to a square your bishop attacks).

Third Stage:
Coming into contact with targets:
Pawns that can't be defended by other pawns.
Pieces that have few or no defenders.
Squares near the enemy king that have few or no defenders.

A classic example is a far advanced knight outpost, or a rook on the 7th rank, but long range pieces may be able to do this from your side of the board.
Bonus if your piece is defended or can't easily be attacked.

Fourth Stage:
This is where you cash in your piece activity for material or checkmate. This is where tactics happen. Of course you might win things very early in the game (skipping lots of stages) but that relies on mistakes by your opponent. This list is how players might win/lose even when they're not making any obvious mistakes.

---

Most players struggle with advancing down this list after stage 1 or 2. They develop their pieces, castle, and there's this feeling of "now what?"

When you feel like that, first of all the common advice "when you're unsure what to do, find your worst-placed piece and improve it."  "Beginners play by moving their best pieces, while masters play by moving their worst pieces."

But if all your pieces seem to be pretty good, then it's often time to start going for a pawn break. Pawn breaks open lines (an "open line" is a file, rank, or diagonal with no pawns on it). Your pieces can use open lines to continue advancing past stage 1 or 2. But be careful, pawn breaks aren't automatically good. They tend to favor the player who has more active pieces in that area... so if you play a pawn break on the kingside, and your opponent has many active pieces there, that might backfire (you're doing your opponent's work for him).

Also, it's convenient to play 1.e4 e5 or 1.d4 d5 because it makes the pawn breaks much easier to find (you attack your opponent's center pawn with a pawn of your own).

(I think you already know about this, though?)

Anyways, they use grandmaster games because grandmasters play well. But I don't think the games matter as much as the explanations for a game. For example, one might be going through a game and the video says, "black didn't play this move because after blah blah blah, he has lots of weak squares."

Of course, for lower rated people this kind of explanation isn't satisfactory, so maybe you'd watch a video about weak squares. The game is of course, a grandmaster example. Usually, in my experience, at least, they do cover the worse variations. "Black would like to play this move, but it doesn't work because of X. This threatens Y, so black cannot defend both at the same time."

Of course, the quality of explanations matter, but the games don't matter as much.

I don't know. In my case diamond membership took me from 800 blitz online to 2072 FIDE and even higher online in under 3 years. You must have studied inneficiently

It's unlikely because of the diamond membership. I know you do chessable. I'm sure you have at least a few chess books.

Let's not forget the dirty word 'talent' component here 

Two things. One, you've been offered a lot of great info in this thread. Two, you mentioned something that really stuck out. You can't visualize. Visualization is a must for calculation and this might be your most formidable barrier at the moment. Visualization is also one of my issues, especially after not playing serious chess for decades, but I'm slowly improving in that regard. I spend most of my time solving 4 and 5 move tactical puzzles, occasionally also work through an end game book only using a board once the positions become murky. If you do the same, I bet you'll notice your calculation skills will improve.

Analyze your own games.  Then get a second opinion. Then analyze your analysis. Apply what you've learnt in the next game.  Rinse and repeat with the next game.

The second opinion should be from a much better player.  An engine may not be able to offer you an explanation that you can understand yet.

I do appreciate all of the tips people have shared on here but I think we've gotten a little off topic here   I did want to address a few points though.  It is not that I haven't benefited from all the stuff I've done on here in the 4 months, and I've learned a lot so far and have put in a LOT of time on here over this period.  I can't say there has been even one thing I didn't pick something up with and I'm doing the lessons and videos back to front and the only ones I've skipped are the here's how the pieces move, here's how to do a rook roller, etc.  I'd just like to see more analysis geared toward intermediate players and I'd even settle for the 1000-1200 ones that Nelson Lopez does, full of blunders as they may be but having a lot more good stuff in there for a player of my limited expertise than these GM ones, in my opinion anyway.  I watched a bunch of his videos over the last few days and this is what really opened my eyes as to what this site could be for modestly developed players.

Not having the ability to visualize at all or have any visual memory is a huge disadvantage in chess and this has steered me away from seriously studying the game all these years, although I just decided that I enjoy chess enough to still see what I might be able to do anyway.  I'm limited to playing the game conceptually, and the reason why I liked the comment about the importance of scope is that it got me realizing that this is more important than I had realized even though I knew it was pretty important.

I have no problem devising plans though, it's just that I'd like to devise better ones and that's how I'm going to improve.  I also strive to learn more efficiently and this is why I started this thread, as I do see the content here being too skewed toward master game analysis.  I don't mind the level so much as the massive reliance on the game analysis part with the videos, as opposed to a more teaching orientation with many more examples that pertain to the topic under discussion.

I do realize that producing these videos is a significant undertaking and it's just so much easier to take a game and annotate it for the video.  It should be hard to disagree with the fact that more game analysis from players below the master level would serve to better balance the reach of the content, which is not only the right thing to do but the right thing from a business perspective as well.  There is a little of this and I love these videos, more than just a smattering would be a big improvement.  Even better, we should be able to pack in more than a single game in the themed videos, show us more examples please if you can even though just using one is clearly easier to produce.

The other tools by the way are great, I have no problem following along with the engine and it's the ideas I'm after here as I can't remember lines.  This is why I joined actually, I tried out the site and played some games as the engine and thought what a great way to learn and it has been.  When I play my own moves I have the analysis up and that's been great as well.  I especially enjoy the simplicity and transparency compared to watching GM games where it's not always so easy to see what the plan is and learn from it, especially when you need to do a lot of calculation to figure it out before they show it to you.  Overall, the site needs to work harder on broadening its appeal to a wider range of players which was the sole point of this thread.

I've been spending a lot of time watching a lot of Nelson Cruz videos and found his free videos to be MUCH more helpful to me than the ones on here and this inspired me to do this thread, why can't chess.com have more content like this?  I especially enjoy the ones that he plays his subscribers, and I've learned a lot from even the ones that feature the low level players like 1000-1200.

I decided to see what else was out there and did a search on YouTube for chess and ran into Levy Rozman who for some reason has a dominant position in the rankings.  His channel does have a lot of what I would consider junk on it, although I found a couple of series of him playing his subscribers and this is exactly the thing I'm looking for at this point.  

I started out with watching Chess Steps #1, and the funny thing is I thought of skipping this one because he's playing players 0-400 on this one.  I figured all I'd be seeing with these is a bunch of blunders, and there were plenty, but I still found it pretty instructive, very instructive in fact, on a level that I found to be well beyond anything I've watched on here and I have watched hundreds of these so far.

Levy's video was just so much more relevant to my game and where I'm at is the thing,  I immediately noticed an improvement in my play, and just had my first game without even any inaccuracies according to the engine, aside from a single inaccuracy it gave me the end of the game where I had a queen and rook against a lone king and there was a quicker way to mate, but it only took me a couple extra moves and I'm not doing much thinking at this stage because it isn't needed.

I can't wait to watch the rest of these, I still watch the content on this site but this YouTube stuff is really filling in the gap that I have been speaking about on this thread.  I have no trouble with the more advanced level of the ones on here, it's just that these other ones are so much more relevant for players of my current level trying to beat players of a similar level, and 400 players are a LOT more similar than grandmasters whose play is completely alien in contrast.

As a side note, the play of these super low rated players wasn't really too bad if not for their many blunders, and the biggest thing that is holding them back is a lack of the most basic sense of awareness, hanging pieces and missing other very simple threats.  This has gotten me focused on my own level of awareness and I'm spending more time now focused on what my opponent is doing and this has helped me cut down on my own mistakes.  I'm a lot more excited now about my prospects of getting better

The content isn't that complicated. Chess.com has very little lessons and videos of use to player 1800+ other than drills, endgame practice, opening practice, and of course, puzzles. A majority of chess.com's content is infact focused on the beginner range and the 1200-1600 range. I guarantee you chess.com has no content other than what I just mentioned above for players over 2000.

Membership aside, I’m excited you found content that you can relate and learn better chess play from. Great news!

-Jordan

Thanks Jordan.  I don't find the material on here complicated at all and I do feel I benefit from it, just not as much as I would like.  For instance, I just watched one of Roman's videos on playing for equality as black, and saw him present a game where black used some opening or other I'd never play and show that this isn't a good opening for black.  And the end I can't say that I learned much of practical value to gain equality as black other than avoid this opening and I can't even recall what it was, but there was no risk of that. 

So why did I watch?  Well it's still cool to watch grandmasters play with another grandmaster commenting I guess, and if I started excluding these rather than just watching them all I'm not going to have very much left to watch.

This was never about me, as it would be foolish to think that the site would adapt to my personal needs, only being one person in a sea of accounts.  I expected others to have similar concerns and was shocked that I am fighting this battle myself.  It's all good though, I'm still going to continue on doing what I am doing, watching opening videos going over lines I'll never remember even if I watched the thing 10 times, and all the different ways grandmasters have played against other grandmasters in various positions, and both have at least some merit and benefit.

So I'll wrap this up now and overall I'm real happy with my training plan and appreciate everyone who took the time to comment.  Cheers!