While everyone is plugging their favorite streamers allow me to plug GothamChess. Definitely most entertaining for me as well as educational, followed by the Botez sisters, Agadmator and then Hikaru. I like watching him, but he plays lines that I can’t possibly hope to remember ( I’m around 1800 blitz / bullet ), and so it’s more like watching a magician. “So guys, let’s play the sodium…”
I'm 1950 on chess.com. I know zero opening theory outside the fundamentals.
Watching Hikaru and Danya has really helped my board visualization and how I think about the game. My ideas are a lot more abstract now than they were years ago when I was still a "strong" player. I'm stronger now than ever before and I no longer actively train, and I credit this entirely to players like Hikaru helping me view the board in a drastically different way than I was previously. Something just clicked after awhile.
Interesting. Were you watching streams or YouTube? And were you doing other chess improvement work?
I’m at the same chesscom rating as you and have watched a bit of Hikaru content but somehow felt like I was procrastinating on “real chess study”. Your comment has given me an excuse to try again!
Streaming. The big realization for me was how they think through positions and allowing for vague ideas to dictate positional improvements / guide the process.
Previously I was just looking for tactics and calculating the best possible moves in a very linear manner. Now I look at the board and visualize ways the position would work better in my favor and kind of work my way back from there. Linear calculation is still required, but getting an idea first and then trying to find the path of least resistance to that idea is just so much more fluid for me.
Remove the tunnel vision and treat the entire board as an organic structure that you can reconfigure.
This is probably only beneficial after like 1700-1800 because it assumes you have a solid tactical / positional understanding obviously.
The only other "training" I do is solving puzzles but that's more out of entertainment than actual training.
That's pretty close to my list as well. For me it's GothamChess > Agadmator > Hikaru. I don't care about the Botez sisters. But I watch only on Youtube.
1. GothamChess is the most educational and entertaining. The video format also varies quite a bit which helps.
2. Agadmator is less entertaining than Gotham, but very consistent.
3. Hikaru is of course very strong, but sometimes he doesn't care about explaining what he's thinking and even when he does its harder to follow.
I've ben watching Gotham and Agadmator, almost daily. My wife is a bit annoyed sometimes, but I remember it could be worse. I could be into football.
I can't handle Agadmator because he skips so many important moves without analysis, and when he does provide analysis it's not very insightful. I think he's just a weaker player than the others.
Levy (GothamChess) is a much better player, although it's tedious that a lot of his content is silly stuff like laughing at beginner games. He also tilts really hard which makes me feel really bad because I just want to sit down with him and show some him positivity and I can't, but maybe that's just me.
IMO the best of the chess streamers for actually getting better is Eric Rosen, and maybe John Bartholomew but he's not as prolific. Both are very good but also good at explaining good ideas. Hikaru is almost too good to be instructive, given that he solves hard tactical puzzles completely with muscle memory instead of analysis.
Agadmator shouldn't really be seen as a game analyst, he just reads out the PGN and has the computer going in the background. His content is mostly directed towards casual chess players (or not even chess players at all, just youtube watchers interested in chess) who want to keep up with some more interesting & current high level games.
Being around 2000 myself, I agree that Agadmator’s analyses are not very deep or insightful.
Agadmator channel is educational and informative when it comes to chess scene, drama and history. In this regard, I think he’s the best and most comprehensive.
Overall I enjoy Gotham, Agadmator, Hikaru, Eric Rosen in that order.
GothamChess's friend Eric Rosen is also very good. (Actually I think he may have won their latest match.) I really like his unshakable calm attitude - even when scrambling with 5s left on the clock he still finds time to make informative little comments.
I used to play chess more but am too busy going through Blind 75 to go through chess problems. I don't even want to play a game of chess because I might feel the urge to play and study chess instead of grind Blind 75. I watch the Botez sisters as well. If I was playing more I might watch more streamers, but I hear enough of what's going on in the world of chess from them.
