I prefer books. Most of the time I find videos too time consuming. I like Danny King’s PowerPlay, though. And I’ve enjoyed a lot of Kingscrusher’s videos. Occasionally some others.

I don’t know about much about speedruns, and haven’t watched any streamed. 

I did watch two videos last week that each had some aspects of what you are talking about. One was a master looking at a game between two 1000 rated players. He was pretty sarcastic, but it was instructional. The other was a master accepting challenges from much lower players—seems they were about 1300 up to low 2000s—and playing the Halloween Gambit in every game. That was instructive, and even inspirational. So much so that I played the Halloween Gambit for the first time yesterday.

So, I see how streaming a speedrun could be educational. But, I’m inclined to see that CooloutAC has a point that it seems a little nefarious when players don’t know they are participating. 

It’s not new. I bought it in May.

@CooloutAC I edited my post while you were replying. There’s more. Not full agreement with the degree of your criticism, but I see your point.

Someone rated below 200. I think our friend is actually in I Class.

Downloaded your games. I'll look at a few before the wife and I head out for shopping.

Saw a good sign! You won't stay in I Class long if you keep doing this:

You were beating that 1738. The game is posted.

He blundered by castling long, giving you a blistering attack that won material and could have led to mate, then he lost on time because he had chosen to go beserk. His strategy seems to be to play recklessly for mate. Even though you blundered away a knight, you parried his threats.

he beat a 1700 but i just watched him loose to a 200??? interesting

i wonder if the 1700 was overrated or the 200 underrated

ok so after all that speedrun debating what is the final stance

Chess streamers should be required to submit to a human subjects review board before they do a speedrun.

At least his avatar is a smurf. That's almost like warning the opponent he's not on the level.

When we say they need permission from chess.com and the rating gets refunded, that's simply not good enough, especially so for premium membership members. I play chess with the expectation I'm being matched with someone that's within the bounds of possibility that I'll win.

Being paired against one of the top players in the world where there's -100% chance I'll win all so that he can make a youtube video with click bait title so he can make money is not in what I signed up for when I paid for my membership.

If we, by we I really mean chess.com, want the exposure to grow the community further then just make this something open, scheduled, advertised and plenty of 400 rated players would sign up to play with Hikaru just for the sake of it.  When you do this you guarantee everyone there is there with to be slapped around instead of frustrating some random player who probably paid for a premium membership and is expecting a fair game.

As it stands now, any smurfing from my point of view needs to be dealt with with absolute brutality. Ban all their known accounts. Rating manipulation needs to be a bannable offence and if you can ignore the rules just because you're a GM, it kinda says something about this "community" we're trying to bring people into. There are rules except if you're good, then it's free for all and cheat all you want.

In the end, would rather have a cool 1700 to play with than a toxic 3200.

My 2 cents

Ahem. Learn from the good players.

You're rated 2000+ on blitz and my highest has been 1300. I'm 100% sure I'm learning nothing from playing you as all your moves are at a depth I can't calculate so zero learning to be done there.

Playing against Hikaru would be even worse, even if he's explaining how if I make "this move" I get matted in 6 moves, I can't see that far ahead regardless of how many times that happens, so nothing to learn really.

When you then match Hikaru vs a 400 rated player, it's like telling the ants to learn to avoid the boots by getting stepped on repeatedly. 

You seem to be using/taking your opinions as objective facts and using that to make your points. Whether chess is a sport or not is debatable, and no matter how strongly you feel on the subject, it’s always debatable because people have different opinions. The way you feel about speedruns is also simply an opinion, and the way you’ve been talking to the other members here shows that you’re the one that’s unsportsmanlike.

Some people don’t consider softball a “real sport” considering it’s an “easier baseball”, and although I disagree, I can’t really prove them wrong or right because you can’t prove an opinion right or wrong. Because they’re opinions.

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt

In my opinion, beginners learn best from Greco, Sarratt, Morphy, and eventually Steinitz, Capablanca, Alekhine. I agree the play of today's GMs are well beyond their comprehension. In fact, I'm a bit above beginner and I'm finding that Capablanca's games are more useful to me than Nakamura's.