How much could a player improve just by watching agadmator videos?

I had an idea today of watching all of the agadmator videos but it must be more than 100 hours of video so wanted to ask whether this would be a good use of my time.

I had been thinking about the advice that some coaches give that you can become a much stronger player by reading thousands of annotated games. Do they really need to be read, or do they just need to be seen? When going through the Logical Chess book, I found videos on the same games that I felt I learned more from than from reading the book.

I figure agadmator has reviewed somewhere between 500 and 1000 games over the last 4 years. That is equivalent to about 20 or 30 books so perhaps all of those games would teach me a huge amount about chess. On the other hand, maybe it would come under the category of fake training. Maybe it is too easy to switch off while these videos are playing and not take enough in.

I just thought of agadmator because about 99% of his videos are going over GM games. There are many other chess presenters who do a great job of going over games, but generally other presenters do a wider variety of chess content whereas agadmator is probably the most consistent on focusing on reviewing GM games.

Interested to know what your thoughts are.

Kingscrusher is a better choice, but in that case there are thousands of hours.

I recommend choosing one of kingscrusher's series on classical games, such as https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL776C6E4E40EDC3E6

I just counted 2,484 videos published over the last 4 years. At about 10 minutes per video that is 414 hours of agadmator.

Kingcrusher's 202 videos on classical games is a more realistic target I guess. I see he's been making videos for 14 years now.

That's 202 in one series. kingscrusher has more than 5000 videos on YouTube. 

I’m not really sure. I mean, Agadmator is not as good at chess as some of the book authors, and he just uses computer lines. However, he is 1900. 

Kingscrusher is master level. Also he favors ideas in the position over Agadmator's style of reading chess notation and offering a few simple tactics.

I think I agree that Kingcrusher explains the games in a bit more depth and subtlety than agadmator does.

Ah, nice to know. 

I just watch Gothamchess, Levy makes good videos on everything 

I like how Naroditsky plays 10 minute games and explains what he's thinking, why he chooses moves, etc. while he's playing. 

Its good to understand the concept/idea behind of each move, but eventually you will need to put those into practice. You need to play more to better understand those ideas eventually.

I think that time could be used much more useful. Agadmator isn't a chess coach and he doesn't select only games that are instructive. Many high level aren't necessarily instructive.

It would be more useful to check out the channel St. Louis Chess Club. They have playlists for beginner and intermediate. They present instructive content and you can choose lessons that exactly fit your level.

And you don't necessarily need grandmaster games to learn from. For example GM Huschenbeth has a list (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgtWsdyLNS03WiWAJ0xPomRs4QAtgsOzn) where he analyzes games of amateurs. These games are full of typical amateur mistakes where you can also learn how to avoid such mistakes, how to exploit such mistakes, etc.

Yes I tend to find the St Louis Chess Club videos more instructive than the agadmator videos. I guess it is better in general to study games that are at least a few years old, because if they are still talked about after a few years it must be a good game, whereas new games usually get covered anyway just because they are new.

watch Levi (gotham) because he's never boring - he's too quick. and... he is actually a master. candidate GM too. because honestly, if you'll watch many games, some would be boring, you don't want that. hours of boredom... zzz ZZzzz

I watch Levy sometimes. He mostly covers new chess games, like right now the Washington Chess Congress is going on so he is covering that. Of course there are things to learn from those games but given the choice I would prefer to study older games that have stood the test of time. All that said, I am still a Gotham chess fan 

Me too

isn't it better to just read books and play some games instead of watching videos?

You're not going to learn a whole lot from just watching a series of moves without understanding why those moves were made. You will doubtless get some ideas now and then, but you won't really learn a lot.

The best series, by far, to learn chess on YouTube is Daniel Naroditsky's Speed Run series. In it he starts at the beginner level and works his way up to master. Along the way he explains his moves, what he was thinking, answers questions, and identifies common mistakes at each level with advice on how to avoid them. He tells you exactly why certain moves are good or bad, breaking things down fairly simply and never talking down to anyone.

You will learn far more than just watching the games of masters.

He does a good job of analyzing games and giving his viewers insight into the moves but sometimes he just skips over the opening phase and doesn't explain nearly enough for some very important moves. 

I recommend watching Yasser Seirawan's videos on the St. Louis Chess Club channel to really grasp the ideas of a position, the chessbrah series Building Habits to Improve Your Chess, as well as Hanging Pawn's once you need opening theory (He does a pretty good job). 

You will probably widen your positional understanding a bit, get new ideas and and maybe gain a few points depending where you are now (the lower you are rated the more you will gain from it.)

The thing is though that in a game all that matters is that you are able to calculate lines and that you see stuff. It's a bit like watching a movie about how to play tennis versus practicing it...