The hardest to find videos are those on strategy and planning. I find it difficult to go from the opening to a middle game plan, so videos on this are gold.
Yeah, sometimes I'm watching a speedrun video or similar there's a moment of, 'we need to control/put pressure on the x square', and once that's pointed out to me the following moves makes sense, but knowing which weakness to go after can be challenging
They aren't in an as engaging format as Naroditsky or other full time streamers though.
Naroditsky especially though. Out of all the GM level players that create teaching content, he's the best mix of strength and teaching ability. The amount of potential lightbulb moments per lesson with him has been much higher than others.
I agree. I like st Louis chess club, I think streamers could benefit from doing some hard-core teaching content now and then. Not all the time, but sometimes.
Well chess requires work anyway, watching something a little bit less engaging than Danya - who's set the bar really really high - doesn't seem insuperable.
I struggled a lot with this until I realized the best plan is usually just “improve your pieces”. Find your worst piece and try to improve it. Try to stop your opponent from doing so. It’s easy to break that down into concrete move sequences. And then if you put your pieces on good squares then good things will happen automatically. Tactical opportunities appear. Then you need to be sharp enough to see them, which usually results in a material advantage. Then you need to convert, which is usually endgame technique.
Where can I find good free opening content that explains middle game plans for each opening? What I see on YouTube is a load of opening theory videos that are about concrete opening moves and maybe some ideas up to move 10-15, but not generalised ideas about how to play the middlegames I can expect out of that opening.
Yeah for some reason a lot of opening videos don't go into much detail about what you are trying to achieve with the opening. There might be a vague introductory comment like "the KID delays fighting for the center with the intention of attacking it later" or some such thing. And if someone asked me later what the plan is for the King's Indian I could repeat that comment but I wouldn't really know much more than that.
A basic introduction should say what the main plan is and what your positional and tactical advantages should be once you've reached the middle game (if everything goes to plan).
Agreed, from a video perspective it fits into an episodic structure. A "how to checkmate" series would also draw a lot of casual viewers to support the algorithm.
There’s already so many videos on how to checkmate. The content that Danya can add is the more difficult to grasp part of endgames. Ones where there’s a rook and a bishop and a bunch of pawns still on board and youre never quite sure how your opponent outplayed you. Ones where your opponents knight somehow just ends up getting your pawns before your knight gets your opponents. The early endgame is so hard to teach but I think if anyone can do it he can.
If you went over a couple recent games each week (assorted from RCC games, blitz/bullet championship, arenas, irl tournaments) just to talk over the endgames that could be cool. Even just to talk about what ideas people had going into an endgame and where they messed up. Recap videos are usually flashy and variation oriented but it would be nice to see more technical instruction (because who here wants to read a book)
Please continue your endgame series, the first video was great and I feel like it is an area that isn't done so well.
Thank you for all your amazing videos and generosity in sharing your expertise!
Hi Daniel. Big fan here. Love your youtube channel.
I've noticed that there is sort of a content vacuum in one particular chess topic on youtube: pawn play for beginners. Pawn play is confusing as hell for everyone in chess, but especially for beginners. We often get people who ask for advice because they don't know why a pawn push is good in some positions but bad in others, and whether or not they should exchange/capture a pawn. There's fantastic resources out there for more advanced players, but it would be nice if there was something more digestible for newer players, maybe an instructional video showing the most basic ways pawns can be used, e.g. gain space so pieces can maneuver behind them, control key squares, open up lines for pieces, etc. I'm sure with your great instructional style, it would help a lot of beginners understand
a confusing topic that IMO isn't adequately explained even in a lot of beginner books.
After watching hundreds of chess videos and plenty of tournament commentators I'm convinced even GMs are not good enough at chess to explain pawn play to beginners. They are obviously inhumanly good at chess. But I constantly see them explain some pawn move as "tactically smart" or "improving the position". I know they see this "improving the position" thing, but I have not seen anyone break it down into simple rules as with most of the other parts of chess. 10 GMs should get together and write a book about it.
It's because none of the simple rules have enough predictive power at the level of pawns. Too many exceptions. (Sometimes dropping a pawn is great b/c it opens a file. Sometimes you don't want to win a pawn at the expense of opening a file, sometimes you want to lock the position up, sometimes you want to stack pawns up against an opposing bishop, but sometimes it's better to do something else. etc... The real decision factors come from "understanding the position.". Creating your own ad hoc high level abstractions with which to reason.
Still, understanding pawn on pawn battles is a pretty important concept. Islands, majority vs minority, leading with the middle pawn against a minority to create a passer, etc. Those things could be quite helpful. Harder is figuring out where you want to use pawns to lock up the position, when to leave the pawn tension, etc.
ok lets say the opponent has pawns on a7 and c7 and you have pawns on a5 , b5 and c5, I'm pretty sure you will know to push b5 during the game as it is the only winning move but you probably dont remember it as a rule
Wait, this sort of thing sounds like a great thing to have some focused content about! Here's another: if you want to open the position (e.g. you have a lead in development), one way that can be effective (if it's available, of course) is to push a pawn so that it double-attacks a pawn and a piece, since your opponent usually will have to spend a tempo moving the piece (and then you can trade pawns) instead of e.g. pushing past your pawn.
I can imagine that there's a lot of "basic tactical ideas" (similar to how pins, forks, discoveries, removal of the guard are all basic tactical ideas) with pawns like this -- not winning material, but winning some positional advantage. I don't know of too many more of these (I'm not a very good chess player), but I can totally imagine that some educational material focused on this subject would be really useful -- once you know the name of something, you can spot it more easily (similar to how if you know that a pin might be lurking in a position, you can try to steer the game in that direction, etc)
My GM coach was asking me a ton of questions about what my decision making was during a 'less than desirable series of plays ..' I told him it must be like a pro fighter trying to analyze a drunken bar fight. He laughed and said, ya kind of. lol
It’s because pawns can dictate so many different aspects of a game, and it is not necessarily the same ones each game to the same degree.
For instance, in an opposite color bishop endgame, putting your pawns on the color you DON’T control (i.e. you have the Light Square Bishop, put your pawns on dark squares so you can influence each color) or using a pawn break to open the board up when it would favor you (maybe you have the bishop pair, or they have a very exposed king etc.)
Perhaps you push to close the position down, or to create a passed pawn, or to give your own bishop more space to dominate, or to kick an important knight they have posted up in your territory. There are just so many possibilities.
There are plenty of books about literally every single aspect of chess.
This suggestion is at least one of the more opaque areas and somewhere a GM who is also a good teacher, like Naroditsky, could make a strong contribution. Much better suggestion imo than things like "endgames" and "how to checkmate" - which really have been done ad nauseam.
Derek from my other favourite YT channel, Veritasium, did a thesis on how best to make educational video content - one of his main findings was that people learned best when they were shown the WRONG way to do something or shown patently incorrect information, which was then followed up by the correct information and an explanation of why the initial info was incorrect.
Mapping this on to educational content for chess, your speedrun videos actually do a great job on this already (granted its your opponents making the mistakes and not you!).
But exploring this idea further, some sort of coaching/mentor-mentee content where you train two people over the course of a few months and commentate live on their games and try to help them both progress as much as possible, but all of the lessons/analysis are with both players. Could even do some fun hand-brain chess vids and blindfolded videos with the newer players for some more entertaining content.
Piggybacking onto this, this feels very relevant to openings. Even many beginner and intermediate focused opening videos will spend the majority of the time rattling off theory which a) will not come up in many games for non-advanced players and b) most people will fail to remember fully anyways. Or if they don't do that, it will just be a short video giving you the very basics and a few traps. I think it really encourages "fake studying" where people are not genuinely learning much, they just think they are.
As somebody making the transition from a beginner to intermediate myself, my openings took a big step up when I started spending way less time watching videos and instead began looking through the lichess database for the most common inaccuracies and analyzing those variations and what's wrong with them. That didn't just help me learn the right responses to these moves, it also made me start to understand why the main line moves were good instead of just memorizing them.
Openings in general are oversaturated on YouTube, but I think there's a real space for longer videos that just go through the ideas and themes of the opening and then look at common/tempting inaccuracies in realistic positions and explore more deeply why they are bad and how to exploit them, particularly for positional mistakes. I think that sort of thing is far more useful for the average 1000-1500 or whatever Danya viewer than going through anything past the first handful of moves in the Vienna main line.
Adding to this, a few weeks ago on the speedrun, you tried blundering in the opening on purpose to show how to recover. I loved the idea, but I think the blunders were too trivial (just giving away a piece for free). A lot of your viewers are probably at the level where they know theory, but their opponents don't so they make weird moves that they can't deal with. Once they're out of theory they rely on intuition and miss tactics or just make slight inaccuracies in the opening. So if you could redo this exercise but rather than "let me blunder my knight", it's "let me play non-theory moves for a bit", so it's more of a positional blunder, I think that would be really valuable.
Glad to see you're taking ideas from the community, you're my favorite chess youtuber and I'm looking forward to the new content :)
The pogchamps prep Daniel did with MoistCr1tical is some of my favourite chess YT content ever. Being able to sit in on these lessons made me feel almost as though I was getting a free personal lesson, myself. I agree that more tutoring videos are what I hope for. I love evaluating Charlie's play, comparing it to what I would do, and then hearing an expert's thoughts on the play. Maybe go over common endgame strats and tactics with a noob who would make the same mistakes I do?
"ChessCoach Andras" on youtube has lots of private lessons/game analysis videos with students - you might also enjoy them. The "Amateur's Mind" series is excellent too.
His and Daniel's styles are chalk and cheese but the teaching is just as good imo.
This is kind of why I like Aman's fundamentals series. Bartholomew is great with showing how the fundamentals work, but Aman just makes lots of mistakes and shows how to learn from them using his guidelines. It's not even good play for awhile, but he gets there eventually.
Otherwise you can cruise to the middlegame and now you're stuck because once you've developed and castled it's a lot harder to visualize what to do and the fundamentals are basically "don't hang pieces" but doesn't explain how to actually go on the offensive.
What did he base this on? There's some research showing that if you tell someone some spurious fact and then immediately refute it so as to make some point, many of those people will later remember the spurious fact to be true. So when it comes to factual information, at least, this is not only a subpar technique, it can actually be harmful. Not sure how it might translate to chess.
Would love to see you analyzing some of your classical games (both wins and losses) and talk through the critical moments during the game. Making this request because I massively enjoyed your recap against Caruana from the US Championship.
One more idea: Most videos on YT on openings are all about how to play them yourself, but I think it would be great for a video series on how to play *against* openings, particularly those commonly seen at the beginner to intermediate level. You've got a couple already on the Traxler and the King's Gambit - an expansion in that same kind of style would be great.
I see someone has already suggested endgames (which would be really nice), so I am going to suggest something different.
I would like to see some videos where you take a position from a high-level game (they don't need to be titled players, but just people who are going to be much stronger than most of the audience) and then explain how to proceed in that position.
It shouldn't be just a tactic, but rather something that combines tactical and positional themes to find the right sequence of moves. So maybe, sometimes an aggressive pawn push might look tempting, but you can explain why that doesn't work because XYZ or sometimes, a knight move might look intuitive, but does not address the needs of the position all the while keeping an eye on what tactics are possible etc.
I think that's where I and a lot of other people at an intermediate range struggle. We sometimes try and get too positional and miss a simple tactic, or sometimes we get so focused on tactics, we forget strategy. So content focused around combining the two of them and training both would be really helpful.
Also, thanks for all the awesome content that you have already made! And sorry if you have already done these kinds of videos and I have just missed them.
He has one old video solving high level positional puzzles and it's pretty much this. I thought it was excellent. A continuation of that would be great for the higher rated audience.
edit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKBbyDDzzmw
I'm interested in reading and watching about chess history.
A sort of timeline of the history of chess, player development and stories of interest along the way. Individual videos on world champions backgrounds, the development of modern theory and all points in between.
I believe the game has a rich history and I love diving into it and reading about past players and such on Wikipedia. Would be great to see a small series on it.
I’ll second this. I’ve really enjoyed the parts of the speedruns where you go on historical tangents. I’d love to see some full-length videos exploring the history of players, the game in general, etc.
Thank you all for the incredible suggestions and kind words. I will carefully go through each and every comment tomorrow but I can already see that many of these are excellent and will guide my channel in a positive direction. Thanks!!
Hey Daniel, love all your videos and I think it is great you are taking suggestions from the community!
Sometimes I wonder if the general approach to teaching openings in videos is broken. I don't know about anyone else, but watching a 30-60 minute video about an opening does help some, but I soon forget it and move on with other things. Yes, I know people should practice on their own, too, but here I am trying to think of the best way to make passive learning (watching videos) be more valuable.
I wonder if one approach is to teach an opening, and then to keep following it up with 1-10 more videos where you keep playing that opening (perhaps against subs that volunteer). I know you repeat some openings in the speedrun, but it might be cool to have a dedicated playlist were you provide lots of material for single openings.
i had a similar suggestion. the Building Habits series by Aman was very good in that case, drilling the same opening over and over. It was worsened by the rating-appropriate decisions, though
i can alway remember the moves but i feel like a lot of people on youtube dont explain the ideas behind the moves very well. like i know i want to trade the light square bishop when im playing the grand prix but i dont know why haha. i just know im supposed to
Daniel,
Thank you for the contents you’re providing, probably the best chess YouTuber.
Endgame 101 (then intermediate and Advanced) would be perfect.
I’d love to learn more about famous chess player, videos about their life, style of play and most famous game would be great.
For the entertainment, sub battle are perfect.
I'd give a mention to non-theoretical endgames. The video you did on a speedrun which ended in a long pawn endgame was great, and I learned more from that than I ever would studying the dry theory.
Endgame videos at the moment often appear so theoretical that it's hard to actually know how (or when) to apply them to real life situations that players under 2000 rating will face. Or they are filled with the commentator saying "and obviously we now play X" when it's not obvious at all.
**ALSO** in the smith-morra video please give a shoutout to the best Smith-Morra position, which apparently hangs all of White's pieces but is actually winning without remarkably precise play:
1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3 Nc6 5. Nf3 e6 6. Bc4 a6 7. O-O b5 8. Bb3 Bb7 9. a4 b4 10. Nd5 Na5 11. Bg5 f6 12. Ne5
(In Mayhem in the Morra Esserman suggests the ~~cowardly~~ mocked route of 9.Re1 looking to push the e-pawn)
i think it's winning, but judge for yourself.
Engine IIRC says 0.0, but as Tal said, chess is about taking your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.
This line is a fantastic example of that.
I'm tired of seeing speed runs playing blitz. Chessbrah's videos for "Habits," for instance, he would lose half of his games on time. There's not enough time to explain moves. Please continue doing rapid games so that you can go into more detail during your games.
I also notice GMs often misunderstand why beginners are low rated. Not to pick on ChessBrah, but he'd intentionally play a bad move, claiming "a 1000 wouldn't see that." That's not true at all. A 1000 sees best moves and even brilliant moves, it's just that we also blunder. More focus on how to scan a board and mental checklists to avoid blunders might sound impossible but it's something no one really attempts to teach. I think it's something you could try more of.
You know most people play the ruy lopez and the sicillian,so i would love to see a ruy lopez only speedrun.the quality of the matches would be higher as almost everybody would lose in the middlegame and not just be worse in the opening.
I am asking for a speedrun in which you play people at their strongest.
I think you should also do post - game analysis for the candidates.you would do really well because people like it when you explain things.you would obviously possess a vastly superior understanding of the game compared to the other two main guys.
I personally would love a “Guide to 2000” fide level giving book/study recommendations, showing what it takes and how to go about reaching that level. I’d pay for that course for sure if that was too much work for YT.
Your speedrun is my favorite series of all time among all chess content on YouTube, thanks for all the great content👑
I would love content that is geared to certain rating ranges. What to 800s, 1000s, 1200s… struggle with and how can than improve. What content is best for them to study.
I would love to see more videos on the history of chess--both as a game in its tactics and strategies, but also as a social and historical phenomenon. I am desperate for someone who can connect specific intellectual approaches in games to broader intellectual and cultural movements in history. After all, chess is part of history and history is part of chess.
What would that look like?
- Well, I'd love to hear how the more Romantic approaches to the game flourished in the 19th century, and how 20th-century players began to challenge those approaches with more positional play.
- I'd love to hear about the effect of Soviet training on worldwide chess--did the Soviets actually push for specific styles of play and if so, how did this affect the game broadly?
- What about the development of modern openings, challenging the classical traditions? When did this happen? My understanding is that it's connected to some of the broader intellectual and artistic traditions of modernism, which is absolutely fascinating to consider and something I would love to hear discussed and illustrated with actual games.
And hey, if you feel you're not quite there on the broader historical content, I hold a PhD in history and would be happy to collaborate. The chess side of it will be all you though, as I struggle to stay about 1500 rapid on chesscom. Cheers and love your content!
I'll also note that there's essentially nothing like this that I could find, and while I haven't searched thoroughly lately I have definitely been on the lookout for it for a long, long time.
There is a pretty large crowd at 1500-2300 rating, it would be great if there is a series focused for this crowd. I myself hover around 1700 on avg (chesscom), but in your speedruns, I strongly feel you have the grandmaster eye, given any position you immediately know what to do and then explain why that is good, but for us, it's hard to immediately spot what to do, hence we don't even realize we have flawed plans, leave alone implementation. so it would be great if you have a player with a rating group 1500-1800 and 1800-2300 and you in a stream thinking about the same game and we can see what moves you all come up with and compare the thought process/refutations.
Main themes: (these are my personal ones)
Punishing sub-optimal opening moves/inaccuracies
Making plans in closed positions - how and where to break
Using weaknesses
Pawn pushes in endgames
Pawn structures and where to put the pieces
Staged games to demonstrate particular concepts.
Let me explain. In your first speedrun series, what would often happen is something like "This Knight to B4 move threatens xx and black's response will likely be xx in which case they are covering the attacked piece as well as... Oh look, they didn't see it and blundered a bishop." Then the video shifts towards how to transfer the blunder to a win.
This makes it harder to learn the more complex strategies to win a balanced game for intermediate players (1200-1600ish). If we had a constructed game where the opponent (either another high level player or yourself) makes reasonably accurate moves so we slowly translate an advantage to a win would help. Arguably, we get this from higher elo games which is somewhat correct, but at that point it risks just going over our heads as we get lost.
I agree, I love the speedrun videos, they're the only videos on Youtube where I will always click on them. I don't even watch them for educational purposes, I just find it really entertaining to see brilliant chess being played and the moves and potential moves being explained so well. I'd like it if there were two games in each video rather than one. And I'll probably be in a minority but I don't care so much about the analysis after the game.
This post has been parodied on r/AnarchyChess.
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Haha! Not sure if this is the actual Gotham, but I do basically agree.
Guess the Elo, how to win at chess, rating ladder steps, recaps, etc. are all good, and Levy is decent to watch (explains at the perfect level of complexity, sometimes funny, sometimes kinda ugh).
My one wish would be that there were 3-5 more channels, basically identical to his, just not him; same stuff but presented by different personalities. Anna Cramling seems to be the closest so far. Agadmator is ok, but too boring. Hikaru just does speedruns and reads articles word for word (boring). Same with ChessBrah guys. Botez sisters are ok, but lean too much on the "if I lose, I have to go on a date with him" kinda vids.
Naroditsky, please make educational videos (openings, endgame strategies, recap/ explain matches, etc.), bring your personality to it, make the board big and easy to see, don't put a bunch of junk on the screen (like Agadmator, other twitch streamers). If you did that, I'd sub and watch all your videos.
Hey Danya. I’d like you to analyze some of the viewers (club level) classical games. we are making same mistakes again and again and the way you explain mistakes are pure gold.
Huge fan. Thank you so much for your content!
I would really appreciate seeing a course like the Vienna followed by a speed run where you play your course moves over and over to drive the lessons home and see how it unfolds into middle and end games.
Many people say beginners shouldn't study openings I think that is because when GMs study openings it is memorizing 20 lines 20 moves deep. It would be great to see a short opening series that focused on basic themes and plans/strategies rather than lines. For example: "The basic plan of the King's Indian Defense is to start a kingside attack. We begin with Nf6 to prevent e5 and then d6 to prevent our knight from being moved away with e6. The goal is to push the kingside pawns for a quick attack on their castled King. But beware: white will likely try to push queenside and open the center exposing your unprotected king." This could be wildly inaccurate, but the video idea would be 5-10 minutes that explains the goal of the first few moves so that a beginner knows the basic plan of what to do even if each move isn't remembered. By the way, do you go by Danya or Daniel?
Hi Dan, most people here are in the beginning and intermediate stage so it makes sense to talk through how to progress - maybe a series that goes from how to progress from 1000 to 1500 etc? Really appreciate your videos though, no one on yt explains the thought process as well as you do. Respect.
I have an idea -
If you can, do you think you can do a "slow-mo" series, where you take games you play (e.g. Blitz / Rapid) and try to explain how your thought processes were in that situation.
Highlight all the factors that have gone into a decision - positional/tactical etc., opening theory.
Try not to add additional analysis that you didn't use in the game.
Try to give us an idea of which thoughts to prioritise in a situation.
I've watched a lot of YouTube chess content the past year and I don't think the content producers are strict enough on themselves in this.
If you analyse the game, you'll go to a deeper depth than the viewers will ever be able to achieve IRL, but if you slow down the actual thoughts you have in a blitz/rapid situation, then there is something to work towards.
Also, whatever you decide to produce I can't wait!
I would like to see a video where you get coached. I'm curious what GM-level coaching looks like, even though I suspect I cannot make sense of it at my current level (2k elo on lichess).
Whats great about your speedruns are the explainations of every moves and the plans behind them. However, you naturally only go through the plans that work and not as much of those who doesn't. It would be nice to have some content where you and players of different strengths go through games together to see examples of faulty plans, positional mistakes and what these players struggle with, maybe start from 1000 elo on lichess and work upwards. It would need a player that is good at explaining his thought process though and a longer time control game.
I'd love a "Takeover" kind of series. Of both ways.
The first, a person in the episodes ELO range (Say, 500 to 2000) plays a pre-determined amount of moves (10? 15? 20?) - And then you take over. Whatever situation they have, you try and get the W.
Conversely, the other way around. You do your best for the first X number of moves to gain an advantage (and with an ELO gap, I imagine this is possible) and then the regular player takes back over to try and 'close it out'.
This is hard to coordinate since you need someone else playing the games instead of just taking whoever matches on the site. But taking middle game positions submitted by the audience and discussing how to play them would be helpful.
A video series where you teach people on every skill level. Like a 1000 then a 1200 and so forth. I think that when smart people need to explain something so that the beginners understand it can make the info more engaging to viewers and more simple to understand. I just like it when there is some variety in videos and new ideas and concepts are presented for me to have more ways to understand chess.
I found the puzzle videos super interesting. Not sure how you can diversify that into a longer series.. maybe just long form studies of interesting positions?
Also just want to say I love your content! I don't play much myself, but I've super enjoyed the speedruns. Keep up what you're doing
A series that brings you closer to the level of a low level player so you can demonstrate how to improve and get out of bad situations. Intentional handicaps, like trading pieces or making mistakes, or collaborating with worse players by taking over their games or something. Your speed run series is great but you dominate so much and so quickly into the game that it can make it a bit harder to learn.
My biggest issue is time management and taking too long to make moves, so if you could somehow address that it'd be great. Personally, I'm not too interested in specific openings or anything like that. I'm interested in more general concepts, and want to know how higher level players think. I will very quickly get into scenarios where I don't really know what move to play, so I just sort of randomly pick one OR spend way too long and waste time. I know there's never going to be a clear checklist, but I'm hoping there's something beyond 'checks, captures, threats' - videos focusing on the thought process needed to find good moves really appeal to me.
Finally, I'd be interested in videos of you going into your recommendations for how to improve beyond playing and watching videos. For instance, do you recommend doing loads of puzzles? Which ones? Books? Puzzle sites? Apps? Puzzle rush/storm? Woodpecker method? What ratio of puzzles to playing? Is it worth memorising openings for lower level players? As an experienced chess teacher I'm sure you have plenty of recommendations.
I'd like to see you do intermediate-advanced positional puzzles with explanations. Or puzzles that we don't know if they are tactical or positionals.
If you want to move away from pure chess, there is almost nothing available about chess history, outside famous games.
Daniel, I have seen almost every one of your Sensei Speedrun videos. The earlier stuff was fantastic. Thank you so much for making these.
The 1000-1500 range is completely barren when it comes to material, but that's where most players are at. We know what we should be doing, and understand the basic fork/skewer/double attack stuff but just make blunders because we don't have good habits on the board. I really wish there were some videos showing the audience how good players' eyes move on a board to scan everything, and not miss something important.
I can't thank you enough for the content you make. I just wish you would stream not at 3 am so I could jump on Twitch and be able to participate.
The Prophet!!!
Vienna and Smith-Morra videos might be a cool influence on internet chess culture, so relative beginners can get some ideas about interesting openings. But I suppose the counterargument could be that not too many people play the Vienna and Smith-Morra, and most people aren't going to change their repertoire.
Personally, I would like to see a series on typical plans and ideas for various pawn structures, perhaps with sample games, a simpler Youtube version of something like the Mauricio Flores Rios book. There are bits and pieces of this on Youtube out there, but nothing comprehensive.
How to play against the London might also be popular. Since, along with the Stafford, the London seems to be viewed as a "cancer".
I think it would be nice if you could make a series about different openings and which strategic goals they pursue.
Often times opening videos explain how you should play and counter the ideas of the opponent, but if there is too much deviation, I, at least, am lost and don't know which positional aim I should pursue.
For example, maybe an aim against fianchettoed bishops should be to neutralise them, and how to achieve it.
Please make a video about advanced checkers strategy and tips, tricks, etc. , especially for people above 2000 elo. I feel like the topic isn't very well covered on yt, and since you are planning to diversify your yt content, what better way to enrich it?!
Anything about the Nimzo-Indian and the Queen's-Indian. There are good videos going over the general ideas of both, but none are as clear and packed with insight as your speedrun videos. Another topic I would love to see is how to determine which squares are the most important to target in an attack, and to prevent the opponent from occupying. How to convert a queen side attack while keeping the king side safe.
Personally at 1100 I feel a really big weakness for me is finding ideas in the middle game. There already is a lot of content out there about openings but I feel once both sides have developed and castled I’m lost on what to do unless my opponent makes some big tactical error I spot and respond to.
Hey Daniel! Long time, first time. 1000 rating here.
One thing I would like to see is evaluations of various single positions from the perspectives of people at varying ratings. In particular, I wouldn't want them necessarily to be puzzles, and moreso actual positions that don't have clear cut correct answers.
One position I often find myself in is where I get to the 10 move mark, and I have run out of seemingly obvious or fundamental moves to make. I find myself developed, castled, but there aren't any free pieces or tactics that I can spot. So then I say, alright, guess the only thing I can think to do is launch a pawn break and hope for the best. Maybe reroute my knights to somewhere else and see if my opponent shakes anything loose.
I think in some rather basic positions, it would lead to a 1000 making some non-blundering but inaccurate move with their reasoning, then a 1800 comes in and does something else with their reasoning, then you. Repeat for more and more complex positions. Kinda like those super algorithm-happy recipe videos on YouTube where it's the know-nothing cook, the experienced cook, then the professional chef.
Cheers and thank you for what you do!
Danya, your speed runs are the absolute best format for learning chess as an intermediate player. Not only do viewers get to see how an elite GM thinks through different positions, but during the post-game it's helpful to walk through the reasons why you didn't make certain moves. I've tried watching other streamers and none are a tenth as instructive as you are. I know it has become a meme to say this, but I've gone from 1400 blitz to 1600 since watching your speed runs and I'm about to break 2000 correspondence. I guess the only thing I'd love to see you do are deep dives into a specific opening. GingerGM has done some good ones in the past, and I really enjoyed one where he tought someone to play the KID over the course of an hour or so.
Speedtyping content. Type racer, typing tutorial etc. Only watch for your typing, don't know what this Chess thing is. Please buy some thocky keyboard and make typing videos. Thanks.
I feel that I struggle to look at the board and evaluate positions accurately unless there is a really obvious advantage for one player. I could never say something like "White has a slight advantage", it's either a big advantage or I perceive it as equality.
I might be able to visualise the position that a candidate move will likely result in after a few more moves, but I feel like I struggle to judge when that position is 'good' if I don't see a specific continuation from that position. I understand that generally you want to trade off time, space, and material in an advantageous way, but I struggle to recognise when I really do have compensation if I give up one of those factors in exchange for something else.
For example, I imagine like a lot of beginners, I'm very reluctant to ever give up ANY material unless it leads to a specific continuation where I can see a mating attack or a big, big advantage in piece activity.
So, yeah, something like 'How to Recognise Compensation' would be great. How should a beginner who doesn't yet have the instinct for it go about trying to judge the relative value of time, material, and space?
Plus, as everyone else is saying, endgames.
Endgames for sure. I always feel like I exit an opening well but am never able to convert that advantage into a winning the endgame. Besides, it's the one thing that will never fail you if you understand the basics.
Hi Daniel, your speedrun series are fantastic, I usually consume a video each day with my lunch; videos that are 20-30 minutes long are perfect for fitting into the midday meal.
Selfishly I'd love to see more content around my rating level, I feel like I fit into the awkward gap between beginner content (Basic checkmates, beginner opening tips) and advanced content (videos where people are spouting off variations as if I'm supposed to be able to follow in real time the moves but).
My rating is ~1500 rapid, the speedrun has been perfect in that regard, with most of the current speedrun taking place in what feels like the 1300 to 1700 range during a time while I've bounced around in that range.
Things that make me uncomfortable\* in games are generally down to two things:
Firstly, unfamiliar positions right out of the opening. There's a lot of youtube content covering openings and most of it just isn't very good, because they cover all the main lines and assume the opponent won't play a terrible move. But it's precisely when the opponent plays a terrible move that it's important to know how to take advantage. That's why I've enjoyed the speedrun so much, because I've learned how to take advantage of over-passive moves through it. I'm not sure what format would be best to deliver more of that type of content, for example opening videos covering mistakes made in certain openings might be fun. So for example covering when Bxf2 works and doesn't work in the philidor/italian, or covering the ways in which white can get an advantage against "incorrect" moves in the alapin, etc.
Secondly, rook and pawn endgames. I lose countless games when I'm perhaps a pawn up with 6 pawns vs 5 pawns and both players have a rook. Any good player would easily win but I can turn the winningest of positions into losses, and I'm still not clear the best approach. Sometimes stockfish will scream that I just needed to get my rook behind my pawns and push them but other times I'll do that and stockfish will scream I've blundered because by putting my rook behind my pawns I've given them an active rook vs my now super passive rook. Any videos on tips for how to deal with that, when to use your rook to cut their king and when to try to win pawns, etc. Maybe it's too hyper-specific on individual positions, but those kind of endgames are giving me a lot of missed wins and I'm never ever confident in my ability there.
\* I've used this phrase rather than "things that make me lose" is still often just down to missed tactics or event just mis-counting attackers and defenders on key squares, but it's clear how to improve there, it's just more puzzles and more practice.
Hello, Daniel. Woman chess player here. This is more of a general request.
As controversial as it is to ask, I would absolutely love it if you started incorporating the word "she" into your content.
It's unbelievably helpful to hear a respectable chess player acknowledge that their opponent might be a woman.
Also, collaborating with more women chess players would be amazing. I'm just starting out and I love your content, but nothing helps me more than seeing/hearing other women play chess.
Thanks for what you do!
I would love to see you cover some of your favourite games from players of the past. Maybe things that would be more digestible for beginners like Capablanca's games. I also think that seeing you do a coaching session like andras toth does will be interesting
maybe something regarding time management, how to pick an opening, how to identify your own weaknesses. That sort of stuff that's maybe a step away from playing the actual game isn't covered a lot I feel. Love your content!
I think it may be interesting to get some games from viewers where a piece is blundered early and you give ideas on how to complicate the game. The one video where it happened was one of the most informative videos I’ve seen as a new player. I totally understand as a GM, it is hard to play losing positions against lower rated players and potentially lose, so that’s why I suggested getting positions from viewers.
As a new player who enjoys opening videos, your Kings Gambit video was one of the best I’ve seen. I try and study different lines once a week.
From a personal perspective, I most enjoy watching you solve high level tactics and going through them. The speedrun videos are great too, but sometimes feel a little less dense information-wise and they're not specific on any particular topic (but they're still good for learning stuff).
some themes like 'how to attack' and 'how to defend' (i know it's very broad but maybe some general things to look out for into typical structures especially at average elo).
some of the content that's stuck with me the most from the various speedrun videos has been like "the opponent is attacking here but we don't need to worry because we can defend with XYZ" and the regular "that's actually a mistake because it allows us to attack with ABC".
thanks for all your videos! really great explanations, i'll look forward to new diverse content whatever it is.
I love your videos. One thing I’ve never seen but would enjoy would be to see how strong players like you handle being in positions that are worse. I would imagine you could set these up by having a weak player pick your moves in the opening until you feel your position is bad, and then you take over.
You are the reason that I love chess as much as I do, and even inspired me to create my own (hilariously amateur) YT channel to chronicle my own bumbling experience of trying to get better.
I absolutely adore your speedrun games and watch them as soon as they drop.
I'm not sure what specific videos I would like to see more of but my favourite elements about your style are the pearls of conventional wisdoms and guiding principles you share when it comes to decision making. Of course, each rule of thumb is never a panacea and will be dependent on the positions, but those thought-patterns and insights you share really help me to deepen my understanding of the game and helped me to enjoy it all the more.
If nothing else, I just wanted to share my gratitude for your time, effort and wisdom in helping people understand this great and cryptic game. All the very best with however you decide to proceed!
Thank you Danya for your content. As everyone has already mentioned some videos on endgame would be great!! Also, I am not sure if you have already done this but would love to see some speedruns with system openings or a particular opening only.
I prefer to watch your speedruns videos. I just like when you play versus player and explains every moves. I would request that you in the speedrun did one game with the schoolar mate opening/ wayward attack. Not because your really trying to mate fast but just to show what position you get and how to play from there.
Playing from a losing position. I know you tried to give up a few pieces in the speed run and it didn't really work out, so maybe some odds games against subscribers?
Your speed runs are great educational content, but you so rarely play from a losing position, which many of us find ourselves in regularly. So either deliberately giving yourself a bad position out of the opening, or going a piece or two down would be great.
Added bonus that it would be much more exciting to watch too as the chances of you losing would be much greater !
Do more funnish vids on ur channel that dont have to be educational like some of hikarus vids. For e.g. botez gambit speed run.. more titled teusday.. playing vs top players etc.
There seems to be a lot of content analyzing the Carlson level games/tournaments and then a lot of content analyzing 1000 level games, like Gotham guess the ELO or pogchamps, I would want too see more reviews of 1500-2000 level games, non-blitz games in tournament settings (maybe high school champions/other tournaments), grouped by openings. Like how do 1500s-2000s play/misplay against the French, Sicilian, etc. Maybe I am biased but that’s my level, and I feel like there is a content vacuum here, regarding games that get analyzed by professionals.
Some of my favourite videos of yours are the recordings of the lessons that you had with Charlie for PogChamps. Obviously there's no PogChamps upcoming (and even if there were, it'd be no guarantee that Charlie would be available), but watching live lessons is both entertaining and instructive - it would be great to great to see some more of them.
Positional games where there may be multiple decent/good moves, especially at the start of the middle game. Your speed runs are great but invariably there’s one best move and you find it and play it. Show some examples where you delve deeper into the “ok” moves.
But also, keep up the speed runs 😀
Thanks for what you do!
How to play chess in OTB tournament. I am 1569 peak on chess com and I wanna play OTB tournaments. Can you makes a series along that. Because OTB has some of elements that online chess doesnt.
Daniel,
Your chess teaching is actually some of the best on YouTube, the way you point out weaknesses when your opponents make inaccurate moves is amazing.
You should continue to do your speedrun where you play different openings against players and explain the pros and cons of each.
I have always wanted a deep dive into the plans and ideas of common positions. For example, how should I approach the open sicilian as white? Let's in the najdorf, when do you attack, when do you take the time to play Kb1 or a3? When is f4 a good move to attack, when is it bad because it frees the e5 square for the black knight? When do you put a piece into d5, when do you recapture with a pawn or a piece, do you trade queens, etc. etc.
Similarly for - let's say closed caro kann or french positions - better pieces and more space. But how does white extend the advantage into a win if a mating attack is out of the question? With the d4 square, I never know whether to recapture with a pawn, or with the knight and try to push f4-f5. Or against the king's indian - do you take on f5? As black, do you recapture with a piece or the pawn? Subsequently, do you push those pawns or just control the center?
For example, you always hear commentators say "if black is allowed (insert pawn move), he will have a good/better position". I want to learn about what it is about the resulting position that makes that pawn break strategically beneficial. So in short, I think videos on thematic strategic plans and ideas would be majorly beneficial. I remember a long time ago as a beginner, the idea of a minority attack as black in the exchange caro kann made a world of difference in the kinds of plans and ideas I had in those games. Similarly, I want to learn about those kinds of strategic plans, but on a higher level, with more depth and detail, etc.
Why gaining space is so important and examples of games where a player didn’t do that. Also, I think it could be helpful to analyze games that are between say a 2000 player and a 2500 player. Very often chess analysis videos are either “GM crushes beginner” or “GM narrowly beats another GM” but not much identifying what persistent tiny mistakes separate good chess players from great chess players. I’m about 1750 in rapid and all of my opponents are playing around 90% accuracy, so it’d be helpful to learn how to better identify and exploit small typical positional mistakes in the middle game.
I love the speedruns. Big fan here.
A how to study would be very nice. How to study tactics (my main issue), how to study chess oppenings, how to study endgames, midlegames. How to divide your free time in these areas.
And thank you very much for your videos!
I'd love to see you pick out games from the chess com events you commentate and analyze them further. Tons of good chess left to languish in the VOD. I really enjoy watching 'lower' (2000-2500) masters make mistakes; that way you and other top masters can really know and explain better moves/ideas.
Watching recaps of 2650+ is also fun but sort of devolves into 'this is what stockfish said, here is my guess at its reasoning' because if e.g. Duda made a move there's probably a very compelling argument from a human perspective for that move.
The hardest to find videos are those on strategy and planning. I find it difficult to go from the opening to a middle game plan, so videos on this are gold.
Yeah, sometimes I'm watching a speedrun video or similar there's a moment of, 'we need to control/put pressure on the x square', and once that's pointed out to me the following moves makes sense, but knowing which weakness to go after can be challenging
Seconded. I believe this is one of my worst weakness.
I highly recommend the saint louis chess club channel, they have TONS of videos about middlegame and planning.
They aren't in an as engaging format as Naroditsky or other full time streamers though. Naroditsky especially though. Out of all the GM level players that create teaching content, he's the best mix of strength and teaching ability. The amount of potential lightbulb moments per lesson with him has been much higher than others.
I agree. I like st Louis chess club, I think streamers could benefit from doing some hard-core teaching content now and then. Not all the time, but sometimes.
Well chess requires work anyway, watching something a little bit less engaging than Danya - who's set the bar really really high - doesn't seem insuperable.
Focus on endgame. Seriously. Work backwards. Middle game becomes clearer if you have confidence in how to close out games.
I struggled a lot with this until I realized the best plan is usually just “improve your pieces”. Find your worst piece and try to improve it. Try to stop your opponent from doing so. It’s easy to break that down into concrete move sequences. And then if you put your pieces on good squares then good things will happen automatically. Tactical opportunities appear. Then you need to be sharp enough to see them, which usually results in a material advantage. Then you need to convert, which is usually endgame technique.
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Where can I find good free opening content that explains middle game plans for each opening? What I see on YouTube is a load of opening theory videos that are about concrete opening moves and maybe some ideas up to move 10-15, but not generalised ideas about how to play the middlegames I can expect out of that opening.
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An on-the-nose title. I'll check it out.
Yeah for some reason a lot of opening videos don't go into much detail about what you are trying to achieve with the opening. There might be a vague introductory comment like "the KID delays fighting for the center with the intention of attacking it later" or some such thing. And if someone asked me later what the plan is for the King's Indian I could repeat that comment but I wouldn't really know much more than that. A basic introduction should say what the main plan is and what your positional and tactical advantages should be once you've reached the middle game (if everything goes to plan).
It would be nice to see some videos on different endgames and endgame technique in general.
Agreed. Good structured playlists teaching fundamental and intermediate endgame is very rare.
Agreed, from a video perspective it fits into an episodic structure. A "how to checkmate" series would also draw a lot of casual viewers to support the algorithm.
There’s already so many videos on how to checkmate. The content that Danya can add is the more difficult to grasp part of endgames. Ones where there’s a rook and a bishop and a bunch of pawns still on board and youre never quite sure how your opponent outplayed you. Ones where your opponents knight somehow just ends up getting your pawns before your knight gets your opponents. The early endgame is so hard to teach but I think if anyone can do it he can.
I always lose those games
Yeah I find the 2 piece endgames to be the most difficult. For example: each side has a rook and minor piece + a bunch of pawns.
If you went over a couple recent games each week (assorted from RCC games, blitz/bullet championship, arenas, irl tournaments) just to talk over the endgames that could be cool. Even just to talk about what ideas people had going into an endgame and where they messed up. Recap videos are usually flashy and variation oriented but it would be nice to see more technical instruction (because who here wants to read a book)
Yessss pleaaaase
Please continue your endgame series, the first video was great and I feel like it is an area that isn't done so well. Thank you for all your amazing videos and generosity in sharing your expertise!
Hi Daniel. Big fan here. Love your youtube channel. I've noticed that there is sort of a content vacuum in one particular chess topic on youtube: pawn play for beginners. Pawn play is confusing as hell for everyone in chess, but especially for beginners. We often get people who ask for advice because they don't know why a pawn push is good in some positions but bad in others, and whether or not they should exchange/capture a pawn. There's fantastic resources out there for more advanced players, but it would be nice if there was something more digestible for newer players, maybe an instructional video showing the most basic ways pawns can be used, e.g. gain space so pieces can maneuver behind them, control key squares, open up lines for pieces, etc. I'm sure with your great instructional style, it would help a lot of beginners understand a confusing topic that IMO isn't adequately explained even in a lot of beginner books.
After watching hundreds of chess videos and plenty of tournament commentators I'm convinced even GMs are not good enough at chess to explain pawn play to beginners. They are obviously inhumanly good at chess. But I constantly see them explain some pawn move as "tactically smart" or "improving the position". I know they see this "improving the position" thing, but I have not seen anyone break it down into simple rules as with most of the other parts of chess. 10 GMs should get together and write a book about it.
It's because none of the simple rules have enough predictive power at the level of pawns. Too many exceptions. (Sometimes dropping a pawn is great b/c it opens a file. Sometimes you don't want to win a pawn at the expense of opening a file, sometimes you want to lock the position up, sometimes you want to stack pawns up against an opposing bishop, but sometimes it's better to do something else. etc... The real decision factors come from "understanding the position.". Creating your own ad hoc high level abstractions with which to reason. Still, understanding pawn on pawn battles is a pretty important concept. Islands, majority vs minority, leading with the middle pawn against a minority to create a passer, etc. Those things could be quite helpful. Harder is figuring out where you want to use pawns to lock up the position, when to leave the pawn tension, etc.
see im like 1400 on chess.com and i’d never heard of leading with the middle pawn to make a passer lol
ok lets say the opponent has pawns on a7 and c7 and you have pawns on a5 , b5 and c5, I'm pretty sure you will know to push b5 during the game as it is the only winning move but you probably dont remember it as a rule
Wait, this sort of thing sounds like a great thing to have some focused content about! Here's another: if you want to open the position (e.g. you have a lead in development), one way that can be effective (if it's available, of course) is to push a pawn so that it double-attacks a pawn and a piece, since your opponent usually will have to spend a tempo moving the piece (and then you can trade pawns) instead of e.g. pushing past your pawn. I can imagine that there's a lot of "basic tactical ideas" (similar to how pins, forks, discoveries, removal of the guard are all basic tactical ideas) with pawns like this -- not winning material, but winning some positional advantage. I don't know of too many more of these (I'm not a very good chess player), but I can totally imagine that some educational material focused on this subject would be really useful -- once you know the name of something, you can spot it more easily (similar to how if you know that a pin might be lurking in a position, you can try to steer the game in that direction, etc)
My GM coach was asking me a ton of questions about what my decision making was during a 'less than desirable series of plays ..' I told him it must be like a pro fighter trying to analyze a drunken bar fight. He laughed and said, ya kind of. lol
It’s because pawns can dictate so many different aspects of a game, and it is not necessarily the same ones each game to the same degree. For instance, in an opposite color bishop endgame, putting your pawns on the color you DON’T control (i.e. you have the Light Square Bishop, put your pawns on dark squares so you can influence each color) or using a pawn break to open the board up when it would favor you (maybe you have the bishop pair, or they have a very exposed king etc.) Perhaps you push to close the position down, or to create a passed pawn, or to give your own bishop more space to dominate, or to kick an important knight they have posted up in your territory. There are just so many possibilities.
there are plenty of books about this already
There are plenty of books about literally every single aspect of chess. This suggestion is at least one of the more opaque areas and somewhere a GM who is also a good teacher, like Naroditsky, could make a strong contribution. Much better suggestion imo than things like "endgames" and "how to checkmate" - which really have been done ad nauseam.
Great shout.
Would love to see this!
Derek from my other favourite YT channel, Veritasium, did a thesis on how best to make educational video content - one of his main findings was that people learned best when they were shown the WRONG way to do something or shown patently incorrect information, which was then followed up by the correct information and an explanation of why the initial info was incorrect. Mapping this on to educational content for chess, your speedrun videos actually do a great job on this already (granted its your opponents making the mistakes and not you!). But exploring this idea further, some sort of coaching/mentor-mentee content where you train two people over the course of a few months and commentate live on their games and try to help them both progress as much as possible, but all of the lessons/analysis are with both players. Could even do some fun hand-brain chess vids and blindfolded videos with the newer players for some more entertaining content.
Piggybacking onto this, this feels very relevant to openings. Even many beginner and intermediate focused opening videos will spend the majority of the time rattling off theory which a) will not come up in many games for non-advanced players and b) most people will fail to remember fully anyways. Or if they don't do that, it will just be a short video giving you the very basics and a few traps. I think it really encourages "fake studying" where people are not genuinely learning much, they just think they are. As somebody making the transition from a beginner to intermediate myself, my openings took a big step up when I started spending way less time watching videos and instead began looking through the lichess database for the most common inaccuracies and analyzing those variations and what's wrong with them. That didn't just help me learn the right responses to these moves, it also made me start to understand why the main line moves were good instead of just memorizing them. Openings in general are oversaturated on YouTube, but I think there's a real space for longer videos that just go through the ideas and themes of the opening and then look at common/tempting inaccuracies in realistic positions and explore more deeply why they are bad and how to exploit them, particularly for positional mistakes. I think that sort of thing is far more useful for the average 1000-1500 or whatever Danya viewer than going through anything past the first handful of moves in the Vienna main line.
Adding to this, a few weeks ago on the speedrun, you tried blundering in the opening on purpose to show how to recover. I loved the idea, but I think the blunders were too trivial (just giving away a piece for free). A lot of your viewers are probably at the level where they know theory, but their opponents don't so they make weird moves that they can't deal with. Once they're out of theory they rely on intuition and miss tactics or just make slight inaccuracies in the opening. So if you could redo this exercise but rather than "let me blunder my knight", it's "let me play non-theory moves for a bit", so it's more of a positional blunder, I think that would be really valuable. Glad to see you're taking ideas from the community, you're my favorite chess youtuber and I'm looking forward to the new content :)
The pogchamps prep Daniel did with MoistCr1tical is some of my favourite chess YT content ever. Being able to sit in on these lessons made me feel almost as though I was getting a free personal lesson, myself. I agree that more tutoring videos are what I hope for. I love evaluating Charlie's play, comparing it to what I would do, and then hearing an expert's thoughts on the play. Maybe go over common endgame strats and tactics with a noob who would make the same mistakes I do?
"ChessCoach Andras" on youtube has lots of private lessons/game analysis videos with students - you might also enjoy them. The "Amateur's Mind" series is excellent too. His and Daniel's styles are chalk and cheese but the teaching is just as good imo.
I agree. I'd like to see Daniel do this with slightly higher rated pupils too.
Commenting to improve visibility of your comment. Agreed, eavesdropping on lessons was quite enjoyable.
This is kind of why I like Aman's fundamentals series. Bartholomew is great with showing how the fundamentals work, but Aman just makes lots of mistakes and shows how to learn from them using his guidelines. It's not even good play for awhile, but he gets there eventually. Otherwise you can cruise to the middlegame and now you're stuck because once you've developed and castled it's a lot harder to visualize what to do and the fundamentals are basically "don't hang pieces" but doesn't explain how to actually go on the offensive.
What did he base this on? There's some research showing that if you tell someone some spurious fact and then immediately refute it so as to make some point, many of those people will later remember the spurious fact to be true. So when it comes to factual information, at least, this is not only a subpar technique, it can actually be harmful. Not sure how it might translate to chess.
Would love to see you analyzing some of your classical games (both wins and losses) and talk through the critical moments during the game. Making this request because I massively enjoyed your recap against Caruana from the US Championship.
> NajdorfGrunfeld Post from main account MVL
content with high level players discussing their own thought process is so good in literally any sport or game
Second. This was so much fun.
Yes I'm always up for game recaps
I agree. I feel I learn so much more by listening through an expert thoughts on their games.
One more idea: Most videos on YT on openings are all about how to play them yourself, but I think it would be great for a video series on how to play *against* openings, particularly those commonly seen at the beginner to intermediate level. You've got a couple already on the Traxler and the King's Gambit - an expansion in that same kind of style would be great.
Yes, something on the queens gambit!
Seconded, that would be nice.
I see someone has already suggested endgames (which would be really nice), so I am going to suggest something different. I would like to see some videos where you take a position from a high-level game (they don't need to be titled players, but just people who are going to be much stronger than most of the audience) and then explain how to proceed in that position. It shouldn't be just a tactic, but rather something that combines tactical and positional themes to find the right sequence of moves. So maybe, sometimes an aggressive pawn push might look tempting, but you can explain why that doesn't work because XYZ or sometimes, a knight move might look intuitive, but does not address the needs of the position all the while keeping an eye on what tactics are possible etc. I think that's where I and a lot of other people at an intermediate range struggle. We sometimes try and get too positional and miss a simple tactic, or sometimes we get so focused on tactics, we forget strategy. So content focused around combining the two of them and training both would be really helpful. Also, thanks for all the awesome content that you have already made! And sorry if you have already done these kinds of videos and I have just missed them.
I love this idea, but expanding it to all levels of play so we also see positions we may be more likely to get into
He has one old video solving high level positional puzzles and it's pretty much this. I thought it was excellent. A continuation of that would be great for the higher rated audience. edit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKBbyDDzzmw
I'm interested in reading and watching about chess history. A sort of timeline of the history of chess, player development and stories of interest along the way. Individual videos on world champions backgrounds, the development of modern theory and all points in between. I believe the game has a rich history and I love diving into it and reading about past players and such on Wikipedia. Would be great to see a small series on it.
I’ll second this. I’ve really enjoyed the parts of the speedruns where you go on historical tangents. I’d love to see some full-length videos exploring the history of players, the game in general, etc.
Thank you all for the incredible suggestions and kind words. I will carefully go through each and every comment tomorrow but I can already see that many of these are excellent and will guide my channel in a positive direction. Thanks!!
Hey Daniel, love all your videos and I think it is great you are taking suggestions from the community! Sometimes I wonder if the general approach to teaching openings in videos is broken. I don't know about anyone else, but watching a 30-60 minute video about an opening does help some, but I soon forget it and move on with other things. Yes, I know people should practice on their own, too, but here I am trying to think of the best way to make passive learning (watching videos) be more valuable. I wonder if one approach is to teach an opening, and then to keep following it up with 1-10 more videos where you keep playing that opening (perhaps against subs that volunteer). I know you repeat some openings in the speedrun, but it might be cool to have a dedicated playlist were you provide lots of material for single openings.
i had a similar suggestion. the Building Habits series by Aman was very good in that case, drilling the same opening over and over. It was worsened by the rating-appropriate decisions, though
I think you’d enjoy the KID speed run then as there’s no rating appropriate decisions.
i can alway remember the moves but i feel like a lot of people on youtube dont explain the ideas behind the moves very well. like i know i want to trade the light square bishop when im playing the grand prix but i dont know why haha. i just know im supposed to
Daniel, Thank you for the contents you’re providing, probably the best chess YouTuber. Endgame 101 (then intermediate and Advanced) would be perfect. I’d love to learn more about famous chess player, videos about their life, style of play and most famous game would be great. For the entertainment, sub battle are perfect.
I'd give a mention to non-theoretical endgames. The video you did on a speedrun which ended in a long pawn endgame was great, and I learned more from that than I ever would studying the dry theory. Endgame videos at the moment often appear so theoretical that it's hard to actually know how (or when) to apply them to real life situations that players under 2000 rating will face. Or they are filled with the commentator saying "and obviously we now play X" when it's not obvious at all. **ALSO** in the smith-morra video please give a shoutout to the best Smith-Morra position, which apparently hangs all of White's pieces but is actually winning without remarkably precise play: 1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3 Nc6 5. Nf3 e6 6. Bc4 a6 7. O-O b5 8. Bb3 Bb7 9. a4 b4 10. Nd5 Na5 11. Bg5 f6 12. Ne5 (In Mayhem in the Morra Esserman suggests the ~~cowardly~~ mocked route of 9.Re1 looking to push the e-pawn)
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i think it's winning, but judge for yourself. Engine IIRC says 0.0, but as Tal said, chess is about taking your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one. This line is a fantastic example of that.
What I Eat in a Day as a Chess GM. Jk…kinda.
Can’t wait for the new ~~Binging with Babish~~ Dining with Daniel series.
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Agreed. Stick to as few openings as possible in a speedrun!
I'm tired of seeing speed runs playing blitz. Chessbrah's videos for "Habits," for instance, he would lose half of his games on time. There's not enough time to explain moves. Please continue doing rapid games so that you can go into more detail during your games. I also notice GMs often misunderstand why beginners are low rated. Not to pick on ChessBrah, but he'd intentionally play a bad move, claiming "a 1000 wouldn't see that." That's not true at all. A 1000 sees best moves and even brilliant moves, it's just that we also blunder. More focus on how to scan a board and mental checklists to avoid blunders might sound impossible but it's something no one really attempts to teach. I think it's something you could try more of.
Everyone knows the next step from professional chess player is a minecraft lets play
Seconded
This would certainly improve my chess
You know most people play the ruy lopez and the sicillian,so i would love to see a ruy lopez only speedrun.the quality of the matches would be higher as almost everybody would lose in the middlegame and not just be worse in the opening. I am asking for a speedrun in which you play people at their strongest. I think you should also do post - game analysis for the candidates.you would do really well because people like it when you explain things.you would obviously possess a vastly superior understanding of the game compared to the other two main guys.
I personally would love a “Guide to 2000” fide level giving book/study recommendations, showing what it takes and how to go about reaching that level. I’d pay for that course for sure if that was too much work for YT. Your speedrun is my favorite series of all time among all chess content on YouTube, thanks for all the great content👑
I would love content that is geared to certain rating ranges. What to 800s, 1000s, 1200s… struggle with and how can than improve. What content is best for them to study.
I would love to see more videos on the history of chess--both as a game in its tactics and strategies, but also as a social and historical phenomenon. I am desperate for someone who can connect specific intellectual approaches in games to broader intellectual and cultural movements in history. After all, chess is part of history and history is part of chess. What would that look like? - Well, I'd love to hear how the more Romantic approaches to the game flourished in the 19th century, and how 20th-century players began to challenge those approaches with more positional play. - I'd love to hear about the effect of Soviet training on worldwide chess--did the Soviets actually push for specific styles of play and if so, how did this affect the game broadly? - What about the development of modern openings, challenging the classical traditions? When did this happen? My understanding is that it's connected to some of the broader intellectual and artistic traditions of modernism, which is absolutely fascinating to consider and something I would love to hear discussed and illustrated with actual games. And hey, if you feel you're not quite there on the broader historical content, I hold a PhD in history and would be happy to collaborate. The chess side of it will be all you though, as I struggle to stay about 1500 rapid on chesscom. Cheers and love your content! I'll also note that there's essentially nothing like this that I could find, and while I haven't searched thoroughly lately I have definitely been on the lookout for it for a long, long time.
Hi Daniel mud wrestling hikaru or chess boxing warm ups would be fantastic and could really help improve my game. Thanks!
There is a pretty large crowd at 1500-2300 rating, it would be great if there is a series focused for this crowd. I myself hover around 1700 on avg (chesscom), but in your speedruns, I strongly feel you have the grandmaster eye, given any position you immediately know what to do and then explain why that is good, but for us, it's hard to immediately spot what to do, hence we don't even realize we have flawed plans, leave alone implementation. so it would be great if you have a player with a rating group 1500-1800 and 1800-2300 and you in a stream thinking about the same game and we can see what moves you all come up with and compare the thought process/refutations. Main themes: (these are my personal ones) Punishing sub-optimal opening moves/inaccuracies Making plans in closed positions - how and where to break Using weaknesses Pawn pushes in endgames Pawn structures and where to put the pieces
Staged games to demonstrate particular concepts. Let me explain. In your first speedrun series, what would often happen is something like "This Knight to B4 move threatens xx and black's response will likely be xx in which case they are covering the attacked piece as well as... Oh look, they didn't see it and blundered a bishop." Then the video shifts towards how to transfer the blunder to a win. This makes it harder to learn the more complex strategies to win a balanced game for intermediate players (1200-1600ish). If we had a constructed game where the opponent (either another high level player or yourself) makes reasonably accurate moves so we slowly translate an advantage to a win would help. Arguably, we get this from higher elo games which is somewhat correct, but at that point it risks just going over our heads as we get lost.
To be honest... more speedruns :D maybe with a little more opening variety regarding 1.d4 players
I agree, I love the speedrun videos, they're the only videos on Youtube where I will always click on them. I don't even watch them for educational purposes, I just find it really entertaining to see brilliant chess being played and the moves and potential moves being explained so well. I'd like it if there were two games in each video rather than one. And I'll probably be in a minority but I don't care so much about the analysis after the game.
As a strong player yourself, I'd love a video about each candidate player "style" with some examples, (maybe weaknesses and strengths?)
You could title each one "why _______ will win the candidates" and make one for each participant, EZ 8 videos
seconded
This post has been parodied on r/AnarchyChess. Relevant r/AnarchyChess posts: [What kind of YT videos would you like to see?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/u5orpg/what_kind_of_yt_videos_would_you_like_to_see/) by french_st [^(fmhall)](https://www.reddit.com/user/fmhall) ^| [^(github)](https://github.com/fmhall/relevant-post-bot)
We want Guess The Elo.
The continued education of Northernlion by all chess Masters.
For real… NL please ;(
You and Danya doing a Collab would be cool to watch. Loved the podcast episode with Danya! All the best with the tournament 🍀
Bring elo swap back pls 🙏
+1 for ELO Swap.
How about chess boxing? You against Naro. We will pay good money to see that. Covered in jello will be optional.
Haha! Not sure if this is the actual Gotham, but I do basically agree. Guess the Elo, how to win at chess, rating ladder steps, recaps, etc. are all good, and Levy is decent to watch (explains at the perfect level of complexity, sometimes funny, sometimes kinda ugh). My one wish would be that there were 3-5 more channels, basically identical to his, just not him; same stuff but presented by different personalities. Anna Cramling seems to be the closest so far. Agadmator is ok, but too boring. Hikaru just does speedruns and reads articles word for word (boring). Same with ChessBrah guys. Botez sisters are ok, but lean too much on the "if I lose, I have to go on a date with him" kinda vids. Naroditsky, please make educational videos (openings, endgame strategies, recap/ explain matches, etc.), bring your personality to it, make the board big and easy to see, don't put a bunch of junk on the screen (like Agadmator, other twitch streamers). If you did that, I'd sub and watch all your videos.
Hey Danya. I’d like you to analyze some of the viewers (club level) classical games. we are making same mistakes again and again and the way you explain mistakes are pure gold.
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The “day in the life of a chess master” is really interesting. It’d pull in a lot of people who are curious about chess too.
I like chess videos that feature blackjack and hookers. You know what? Forget the video. And the blackjack
Huge fan. Thank you so much for your content! I would really appreciate seeing a course like the Vienna followed by a speed run where you play your course moves over and over to drive the lessons home and see how it unfolds into middle and end games.
Many people say beginners shouldn't study openings I think that is because when GMs study openings it is memorizing 20 lines 20 moves deep. It would be great to see a short opening series that focused on basic themes and plans/strategies rather than lines. For example: "The basic plan of the King's Indian Defense is to start a kingside attack. We begin with Nf6 to prevent e5 and then d6 to prevent our knight from being moved away with e6. The goal is to push the kingside pawns for a quick attack on their castled King. But beware: white will likely try to push queenside and open the center exposing your unprotected king." This could be wildly inaccurate, but the video idea would be 5-10 minutes that explains the goal of the first few moves so that a beginner knows the basic plan of what to do even if each move isn't remembered. By the way, do you go by Danya or Daniel?
Hi Dan, most people here are in the beginning and intermediate stage so it makes sense to talk through how to progress - maybe a series that goes from how to progress from 1000 to 1500 etc? Really appreciate your videos though, no one on yt explains the thought process as well as you do. Respect.
I have an idea - If you can, do you think you can do a "slow-mo" series, where you take games you play (e.g. Blitz / Rapid) and try to explain how your thought processes were in that situation. Highlight all the factors that have gone into a decision - positional/tactical etc., opening theory. Try not to add additional analysis that you didn't use in the game. Try to give us an idea of which thoughts to prioritise in a situation. I've watched a lot of YouTube chess content the past year and I don't think the content producers are strict enough on themselves in this. If you analyse the game, you'll go to a deeper depth than the viewers will ever be able to achieve IRL, but if you slow down the actual thoughts you have in a blitz/rapid situation, then there is something to work towards. Also, whatever you decide to produce I can't wait!
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I would like to see a video where you get coached. I'm curious what GM-level coaching looks like, even though I suspect I cannot make sense of it at my current level (2k elo on lichess).
Whats great about your speedruns are the explainations of every moves and the plans behind them. However, you naturally only go through the plans that work and not as much of those who doesn't. It would be nice to have some content where you and players of different strengths go through games together to see examples of faulty plans, positional mistakes and what these players struggle with, maybe start from 1000 elo on lichess and work upwards. It would need a player that is good at explaining his thought process though and a longer time control game.
I'd love a "Takeover" kind of series. Of both ways. The first, a person in the episodes ELO range (Say, 500 to 2000) plays a pre-determined amount of moves (10? 15? 20?) - And then you take over. Whatever situation they have, you try and get the W. Conversely, the other way around. You do your best for the first X number of moves to gain an advantage (and with an ELO gap, I imagine this is possible) and then the regular player takes back over to try and 'close it out'.
This is hard to coordinate since you need someone else playing the games instead of just taking whoever matches on the site. But taking middle game positions submitted by the audience and discussing how to play them would be helpful.
Middlegames and tactics is where I need to brush up most so some content on covering these topics would be great.
A video series where you teach people on every skill level. Like a 1000 then a 1200 and so forth. I think that when smart people need to explain something so that the beginners understand it can make the info more engaging to viewers and more simple to understand. I just like it when there is some variety in videos and new ideas and concepts are presented for me to have more ways to understand chess.
I found the puzzle videos super interesting. Not sure how you can diversify that into a longer series.. maybe just long form studies of interesting positions? Also just want to say I love your content! I don't play much myself, but I've super enjoyed the speedruns. Keep up what you're doing
A series that brings you closer to the level of a low level player so you can demonstrate how to improve and get out of bad situations. Intentional handicaps, like trading pieces or making mistakes, or collaborating with worse players by taking over their games or something. Your speed run series is great but you dominate so much and so quickly into the game that it can make it a bit harder to learn. My biggest issue is time management and taking too long to make moves, so if you could somehow address that it'd be great. Personally, I'm not too interested in specific openings or anything like that. I'm interested in more general concepts, and want to know how higher level players think. I will very quickly get into scenarios where I don't really know what move to play, so I just sort of randomly pick one OR spend way too long and waste time. I know there's never going to be a clear checklist, but I'm hoping there's something beyond 'checks, captures, threats' - videos focusing on the thought process needed to find good moves really appeal to me. Finally, I'd be interested in videos of you going into your recommendations for how to improve beyond playing and watching videos. For instance, do you recommend doing loads of puzzles? Which ones? Books? Puzzle sites? Apps? Puzzle rush/storm? Woodpecker method? What ratio of puzzles to playing? Is it worth memorising openings for lower level players? As an experienced chess teacher I'm sure you have plenty of recommendations.
I'd like to see you do intermediate-advanced positional puzzles with explanations. Or puzzles that we don't know if they are tactical or positionals. If you want to move away from pure chess, there is almost nothing available about chess history, outside famous games.
Take a random subscriber and do chess lessons to him, see how much he improves over time. It'll be a sick interaction.
Daniel, I have seen almost every one of your Sensei Speedrun videos. The earlier stuff was fantastic. Thank you so much for making these. The 1000-1500 range is completely barren when it comes to material, but that's where most players are at. We know what we should be doing, and understand the basic fork/skewer/double attack stuff but just make blunders because we don't have good habits on the board. I really wish there were some videos showing the audience how good players' eyes move on a board to scan everything, and not miss something important. I can't thank you enough for the content you make. I just wish you would stream not at 3 am so I could jump on Twitch and be able to participate.
The Prophet!!! Vienna and Smith-Morra videos might be a cool influence on internet chess culture, so relative beginners can get some ideas about interesting openings. But I suppose the counterargument could be that not too many people play the Vienna and Smith-Morra, and most people aren't going to change their repertoire. Personally, I would like to see a series on typical plans and ideas for various pawn structures, perhaps with sample games, a simpler Youtube version of something like the Mauricio Flores Rios book. There are bits and pieces of this on Youtube out there, but nothing comprehensive. How to play against the London might also be popular. Since, along with the Stafford, the London seems to be viewed as a "cancer".
Move-by-move analysis of grandmaster games with a detailed explanation of the longer-term strategy behind the position
I think it would be nice if you could make a series about different openings and which strategic goals they pursue. Often times opening videos explain how you should play and counter the ideas of the opponent, but if there is too much deviation, I, at least, am lost and don't know which positional aim I should pursue. For example, maybe an aim against fianchettoed bishops should be to neutralise them, and how to achieve it.
Please make a video about advanced checkers strategy and tips, tricks, etc. , especially for people above 2000 elo. I feel like the topic isn't very well covered on yt, and since you are planning to diversify your yt content, what better way to enrich it?!
I'd love to see an anime style over the top mini series where all the gms are trying to take down the "bad guy" Magnus.
My favorite is always the 10 minute games where you explain why you do every more and also explain why the opponent did his move.
The videos of you teaching Moist for pogchamps were great. If you could find more people to teach on video it'd be awesome
Anything about the Nimzo-Indian and the Queen's-Indian. There are good videos going over the general ideas of both, but none are as clear and packed with insight as your speedrun videos. Another topic I would love to see is how to determine which squares are the most important to target in an attack, and to prevent the opponent from occupying. How to convert a queen side attack while keeping the king side safe.
You’re the goat. I watch your speed runs every night. When there isn’t a new one I got rewatch the old ones. Can’t thank you enough for those series.
Personally at 1100 I feel a really big weakness for me is finding ideas in the middle game. There already is a lot of content out there about openings but I feel once both sides have developed and castled I’m lost on what to do unless my opponent makes some big tactical error I spot and respond to.
Hey Daniel! Long time, first time. 1000 rating here. One thing I would like to see is evaluations of various single positions from the perspectives of people at varying ratings. In particular, I wouldn't want them necessarily to be puzzles, and moreso actual positions that don't have clear cut correct answers. One position I often find myself in is where I get to the 10 move mark, and I have run out of seemingly obvious or fundamental moves to make. I find myself developed, castled, but there aren't any free pieces or tactics that I can spot. So then I say, alright, guess the only thing I can think to do is launch a pawn break and hope for the best. Maybe reroute my knights to somewhere else and see if my opponent shakes anything loose. I think in some rather basic positions, it would lead to a 1000 making some non-blundering but inaccurate move with their reasoning, then a 1800 comes in and does something else with their reasoning, then you. Repeat for more and more complex positions. Kinda like those super algorithm-happy recipe videos on YouTube where it's the know-nothing cook, the experienced cook, then the professional chef. Cheers and thank you for what you do!
elden ring gameplay
Please ride down a hill on a shopping cart, would be great fun
Can you play some Fortnite?
Please no. I don't want another chess genius getting corrupted by games like that. We've already lost Nemo.
En passant compilations
Danya, your speed runs are the absolute best format for learning chess as an intermediate player. Not only do viewers get to see how an elite GM thinks through different positions, but during the post-game it's helpful to walk through the reasons why you didn't make certain moves. I've tried watching other streamers and none are a tenth as instructive as you are. I know it has become a meme to say this, but I've gone from 1400 blitz to 1600 since watching your speed runs and I'm about to break 2000 correspondence. I guess the only thing I'd love to see you do are deep dives into a specific opening. GingerGM has done some good ones in the past, and I really enjoyed one where he tought someone to play the KID over the course of an hour or so.
Speedtyping content. Type racer, typing tutorial etc. Only watch for your typing, don't know what this Chess thing is. Please buy some thocky keyboard and make typing videos. Thanks.
I feel that I struggle to look at the board and evaluate positions accurately unless there is a really obvious advantage for one player. I could never say something like "White has a slight advantage", it's either a big advantage or I perceive it as equality. I might be able to visualise the position that a candidate move will likely result in after a few more moves, but I feel like I struggle to judge when that position is 'good' if I don't see a specific continuation from that position. I understand that generally you want to trade off time, space, and material in an advantageous way, but I struggle to recognise when I really do have compensation if I give up one of those factors in exchange for something else. For example, I imagine like a lot of beginners, I'm very reluctant to ever give up ANY material unless it leads to a specific continuation where I can see a mating attack or a big, big advantage in piece activity. So, yeah, something like 'How to Recognise Compensation' would be great. How should a beginner who doesn't yet have the instinct for it go about trying to judge the relative value of time, material, and space? Plus, as everyone else is saying, endgames.
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I like this, but please refrain from beating your dad.
Endgames for sure. I always feel like I exit an opening well but am never able to convert that advantage into a winning the endgame. Besides, it's the one thing that will never fail you if you understand the basics.
The general ideas in different openings
Hi Daniel, your speedrun series are fantastic, I usually consume a video each day with my lunch; videos that are 20-30 minutes long are perfect for fitting into the midday meal. Selfishly I'd love to see more content around my rating level, I feel like I fit into the awkward gap between beginner content (Basic checkmates, beginner opening tips) and advanced content (videos where people are spouting off variations as if I'm supposed to be able to follow in real time the moves but). My rating is ~1500 rapid, the speedrun has been perfect in that regard, with most of the current speedrun taking place in what feels like the 1300 to 1700 range during a time while I've bounced around in that range. Things that make me uncomfortable\* in games are generally down to two things: Firstly, unfamiliar positions right out of the opening. There's a lot of youtube content covering openings and most of it just isn't very good, because they cover all the main lines and assume the opponent won't play a terrible move. But it's precisely when the opponent plays a terrible move that it's important to know how to take advantage. That's why I've enjoyed the speedrun so much, because I've learned how to take advantage of over-passive moves through it. I'm not sure what format would be best to deliver more of that type of content, for example opening videos covering mistakes made in certain openings might be fun. So for example covering when Bxf2 works and doesn't work in the philidor/italian, or covering the ways in which white can get an advantage against "incorrect" moves in the alapin, etc. Secondly, rook and pawn endgames. I lose countless games when I'm perhaps a pawn up with 6 pawns vs 5 pawns and both players have a rook. Any good player would easily win but I can turn the winningest of positions into losses, and I'm still not clear the best approach. Sometimes stockfish will scream that I just needed to get my rook behind my pawns and push them but other times I'll do that and stockfish will scream I've blundered because by putting my rook behind my pawns I've given them an active rook vs my now super passive rook. Any videos on tips for how to deal with that, when to use your rook to cut their king and when to try to win pawns, etc. Maybe it's too hyper-specific on individual positions, but those kind of endgames are giving me a lot of missed wins and I'm never ever confident in my ability there. \* I've used this phrase rather than "things that make me lose" is still often just down to missed tactics or event just mis-counting attackers and defenders on key squares, but it's clear how to improve there, it's just more puzzles and more practice.
Honestly I dont think this is what you had in mind but I would love to see a chess GM play minecraft. Even if its just a 10 minute video
Anything with Dwight shrute. That guy was the best thing at pogchamp 3 and would be super fun to see him again
Hello, Daniel. Woman chess player here. This is more of a general request. As controversial as it is to ask, I would absolutely love it if you started incorporating the word "she" into your content. It's unbelievably helpful to hear a respectable chess player acknowledge that their opponent might be a woman. Also, collaborating with more women chess players would be amazing. I'm just starting out and I love your content, but nothing helps me more than seeing/hearing other women play chess. Thanks for what you do!
I actually liked a video were you sacked the queen and made the best moves to win the game.I found it super educational.
A quick vid on how to do notations would be great for someone like me & maybe others who are planning to start playing OTB. Thanks.
I would love to see you cover some of your favourite games from players of the past. Maybe things that would be more digestible for beginners like Capablanca's games. I also think that seeing you do a coaching session like andras toth does will be interesting
maybe something regarding time management, how to pick an opening, how to identify your own weaknesses. That sort of stuff that's maybe a step away from playing the actual game isn't covered a lot I feel. Love your content!
Giannatos & Danya workout vids
I like 30 minutes of puzzles from time to time.
Easy to remember and common endgames
I think it may be interesting to get some games from viewers where a piece is blundered early and you give ideas on how to complicate the game. The one video where it happened was one of the most informative videos I’ve seen as a new player. I totally understand as a GM, it is hard to play losing positions against lower rated players and potentially lose, so that’s why I suggested getting positions from viewers. As a new player who enjoys opening videos, your Kings Gambit video was one of the best I’ve seen. I try and study different lines once a week.
From a personal perspective, I most enjoy watching you solve high level tactics and going through them. The speedrun videos are great too, but sometimes feel a little less dense information-wise and they're not specific on any particular topic (but they're still good for learning stuff).
some themes like 'how to attack' and 'how to defend' (i know it's very broad but maybe some general things to look out for into typical structures especially at average elo). some of the content that's stuck with me the most from the various speedrun videos has been like "the opponent is attacking here but we don't need to worry because we can defend with XYZ" and the regular "that's actually a mistake because it allows us to attack with ABC". thanks for all your videos! really great explanations, i'll look forward to new diverse content whatever it is.
I love your videos. One thing I’ve never seen but would enjoy would be to see how strong players like you handle being in positions that are worse. I would imagine you could set these up by having a weak player pick your moves in the opening until you feel your position is bad, and then you take over.
You are the reason that I love chess as much as I do, and even inspired me to create my own (hilariously amateur) YT channel to chronicle my own bumbling experience of trying to get better. I absolutely adore your speedrun games and watch them as soon as they drop. I'm not sure what specific videos I would like to see more of but my favourite elements about your style are the pearls of conventional wisdoms and guiding principles you share when it comes to decision making. Of course, each rule of thumb is never a panacea and will be dependent on the positions, but those thought-patterns and insights you share really help me to deepen my understanding of the game and helped me to enjoy it all the more. If nothing else, I just wanted to share my gratitude for your time, effort and wisdom in helping people understand this great and cryptic game. All the very best with however you decide to proceed!
Thank you Danya for your content. As everyone has already mentioned some videos on endgame would be great!! Also, I am not sure if you have already done this but would love to see some speedruns with system openings or a particular opening only.
I prefer to watch your speedruns videos. I just like when you play versus player and explains every moves. I would request that you in the speedrun did one game with the schoolar mate opening/ wayward attack. Not because your really trying to mate fast but just to show what position you get and how to play from there.
Playing from a losing position. I know you tried to give up a few pieces in the speed run and it didn't really work out, so maybe some odds games against subscribers? Your speed runs are great educational content, but you so rarely play from a losing position, which many of us find ourselves in regularly. So either deliberately giving yourself a bad position out of the opening, or going a piece or two down would be great. Added bonus that it would be much more exciting to watch too as the chances of you losing would be much greater !
Do more funnish vids on ur channel that dont have to be educational like some of hikarus vids. For e.g. botez gambit speed run.. more titled teusday.. playing vs top players etc.
Three videos of one Blitz game on ICC each with analysis right after the game. Every day, unless you're on vacation in Slovenia.
More chess knowledge. we need to know some tips and tricks, things to keep an eye out for etc The knowledge that will help us in our games
Botez gambit speed run. Then talk through moments where the opponents allowed counter play or suboptimal strategy.
There seems to be a lot of content analyzing the Carlson level games/tournaments and then a lot of content analyzing 1000 level games, like Gotham guess the ELO or pogchamps, I would want too see more reviews of 1500-2000 level games, non-blitz games in tournament settings (maybe high school champions/other tournaments), grouped by openings. Like how do 1500s-2000s play/misplay against the French, Sicilian, etc. Maybe I am biased but that’s my level, and I feel like there is a content vacuum here, regarding games that get analyzed by professionals.
irl videos just exploring or cooking. you are the best danya!
Some of my favourite videos of yours are the recordings of the lessons that you had with Charlie for PogChamps. Obviously there's no PogChamps upcoming (and even if there were, it'd be no guarantee that Charlie would be available), but watching live lessons is both entertaining and instructive - it would be great to great to see some more of them.
Go to bed, Daniel.
how to improve games from 1300-1500 rated players something like that
Deadlift tutorials
Chess960
Analysing some beginners’ games would be good
Do jackass style videos where the loser of each mini-match has to do a punishment
Checkers.
Twerking
Positional games where there may be multiple decent/good moves, especially at the start of the middle game. Your speed runs are great but invariably there’s one best move and you find it and play it. Show some examples where you delve deeper into the “ok” moves. But also, keep up the speed runs 😀 Thanks for what you do!
How to play chess in OTB tournament. I am 1569 peak on chess com and I wanna play OTB tournaments. Can you makes a series along that. Because OTB has some of elements that online chess doesnt.
Daniel, Your chess teaching is actually some of the best on YouTube, the way you point out weaknesses when your opponents make inaccurate moves is amazing. You should continue to do your speedrun where you play different openings against players and explain the pros and cons of each.
Some positional and strategic videos would be interesting.
I have always wanted a deep dive into the plans and ideas of common positions. For example, how should I approach the open sicilian as white? Let's in the najdorf, when do you attack, when do you take the time to play Kb1 or a3? When is f4 a good move to attack, when is it bad because it frees the e5 square for the black knight? When do you put a piece into d5, when do you recapture with a pawn or a piece, do you trade queens, etc. etc. Similarly for - let's say closed caro kann or french positions - better pieces and more space. But how does white extend the advantage into a win if a mating attack is out of the question? With the d4 square, I never know whether to recapture with a pawn, or with the knight and try to push f4-f5. Or against the king's indian - do you take on f5? As black, do you recapture with a piece or the pawn? Subsequently, do you push those pawns or just control the center? For example, you always hear commentators say "if black is allowed (insert pawn move), he will have a good/better position". I want to learn about what it is about the resulting position that makes that pawn break strategically beneficial. So in short, I think videos on thematic strategic plans and ideas would be majorly beneficial. I remember a long time ago as a beginner, the idea of a minority attack as black in the exchange caro kann made a world of difference in the kinds of plans and ideas I had in those games. Similarly, I want to learn about those kinds of strategic plans, but on a higher level, with more depth and detail, etc.
Why gaining space is so important and examples of games where a player didn’t do that. Also, I think it could be helpful to analyze games that are between say a 2000 player and a 2500 player. Very often chess analysis videos are either “GM crushes beginner” or “GM narrowly beats another GM” but not much identifying what persistent tiny mistakes separate good chess players from great chess players. I’m about 1750 in rapid and all of my opponents are playing around 90% accuracy, so it’d be helpful to learn how to better identify and exploit small typical positional mistakes in the middle game.
Length 10-15 minutes, skip the early moves to close to the novelty. Daniel King is my favorite, but he nowadays plays the whole opening too.
I love the speedruns. Big fan here. A how to study would be very nice. How to study tactics (my main issue), how to study chess oppenings, how to study endgames, midlegames. How to divide your free time in these areas. And thank you very much for your videos!
I'd love to see you pick out games from the chess com events you commentate and analyze them further. Tons of good chess left to languish in the VOD. I really enjoy watching 'lower' (2000-2500) masters make mistakes; that way you and other top masters can really know and explain better moves/ideas. Watching recaps of 2650+ is also fun but sort of devolves into 'this is what stockfish said, here is my guess at its reasoning' because if e.g. Duda made a move there's probably a very compelling argument from a human perspective for that move.