YouTube Phenomenon

The YouTube phenomenon generally refers to the huge amount of videos being posted everyday by plenty of people about plenty of things. But of course, I don't mean it that way here...

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We know what a chess lecture is. For instance, ICC offers some on http://www.chess.fm/ (some don't require your being registered on the ICC). Simply defined, a video chess lecture is a video about chess (an annotated game, the discussion of a specific theme such as the endgame, etc.), in which a player explains or describes something. They most commonly have an educational aim.

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Have you guessed what I am going to talk about yet? Oh, yes, chess lectures on youtube... this time though, it doesn't go through any selection process like there is on ICC. On ICC, the lecturers are either IMs or GMs. It would be senseless to let any random user publish their own little video... Enter youtube. Very few are decently rated -- I saw one FM, one NM and one USCF class A player, but as for the rest, they are not what I could call "rated high enough to make a video chess lecture with an educational aim". Oh, but they do anyway, they do :)

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Some of them are just painful. I will mention a few of them, so that you can bleed with me.

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1) Slattster (http://www.youtube.com/user/slattster)

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There are videos from him in which he is rated in the 800s on FICS. So, I mean, whatever he says, it's to be taken with a grain of salt :) He has now a 1200-something USCF rating... muuuuuch better.

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One nice thing to look at is his videos in which he is commenting a game while playing it, i.e. you get to see what his thought-process looks like, for one; and for two, it means that it is all spontaneous, he didn't prepare his analysis whatsoever. Oh, priceless. Mates-in-2 being missed are awkwardly common, and so are pieces being hung (he sometimes notices it afterwards and says things like "let's see if he'll take it"... of course he'll take it!, you just hung a piece for no reason).

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Not to mention, many of his games are being played on Yahoo! Chess, in the beginners' room... I mean, who plays there?

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2) JRobi (http://www.youtube.com/user/jrobichess)

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Painful too, but in another way. He doesn't do any live games, and you can tell that his analysis are prepared (I won't say "well" prepared, but that's just because he and I don't have the same quality standards for a chess lecture). That gives a much better initial impression: it has been demonstrated (Petty & Wegener, 1998) that the message is more credible when the person speaks fast. And I'll have to admit it, the content is not too bad.

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The main problem is that it comes from a 1400 player. That's for the recent videos; in the oldest, I believe he is rated around 900-1000. He has a great variety of harmful videos: opening analysis, annotated games, endgame studies (for example, the Philidor Position), etc. One particularly irritating series of videos is his "Grandmaster Chess Tactics: Can you spot the line?". I just have one thing to tell him: it's not because it was found in a game between two grandmasters that it is a grandmaster level tactics (pins exist at all levels).

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The guy himself is somewhat irritating. The most frustrating thing is that he calls a game a "match", systematically. A match is a set of games between the same players -- it is not a synonym. His pronunciation of "bishop" and "position" gets on your nerves very quickly too, but what are you gonna do...

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Unfortunately, reinforcement comes from everywhere, since many, many, MANY beginners appreciate his videos. His videos attract an enormous amount of comments, most of them being extremely positive.

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It makes me cry at night.

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3) Chessplayerdan (http://www.youtube.com/user/Chessplayerdan)

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I thank Mother Earth everyday that he only made 4 videos. He is rated 1000 on FICS. Just like Slattster, he made a live game analysis too. Since he was on FICS he had to wait a lot before a game popped up, and it's nice to see him try to fill in the silence during that time.

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Note that if you try to listen to his videos (you shouldn't), you will have to turn your speakers really loud, because that guy doesn't seem to quite get how a microphone works. Oh well.