Preface/TLDR: I mean no real offense to those that make studies like this,
I just with you cared enough to put effort into it. It's literally stuff anyone can do in about an hour.
These studies aren't good. A huge majority of lichess studies aren't good. They're just the same emote spam in the title, with barely any depth or decent explanation while being written by a club player who himself doesn't know any better. It's all junk. It's a common trap for club players to be entirely focused on openings, and skipping out on everything that's actually needed. If you go to the club, you'll definitely see the people playing weird garbage, and pet lines they know to move 20 but never get in a real game unless you let them get into it. He spends a week on these studies, but in reality what comes out is something that takes an hour. Some of that time is probably translating it all to English, in that case I'd understand. But again, he's a club player, where if you took about a month or two of serious/semi-serious chess you'd be 100x better than him. It's all low effort garbage, and if you'd actually look at the guys games you'd see what I mean. Let's look at his "repertoire for e4 players" for a minute, alright? So you click a line, which'll show you about 5 moves of the top 1-2 lines (He doesn't always pick the mainline), but when his comment says "To learn MORE IN DEPTH!!! click my study about it!!!", so you go and click it, then you click what you want and its just 4-5 moves more of whatever. It's literally calling the starting positions your repertoire. You put in a week's worth of effort? For barely any annotations? Not even a quick look on Wikipedia, not even a YouTube video's worth of information. There's literally nothing truly helpful for anyone.
And for those that think it IS helpful, are the ones U1600 that don't even need it. Fundamentals come first. I won't say to study lines and openings, but it's more useful to just watch games that happen to follow in the same openings. It's not learning lines, but when you see Eric Rosen or John Bartholomew play X in the position, and they explain their reasoning that allows you to play X and understand why when you get that position. I'm not even super strong, and as you can see I'm not titled. But even I understand what's pointless and what's not. It's your fault for letting this junk exist. Studies you should mainly focus on are ones main by 2000+ USCF/FIDE, and literal titled players. In my mind, I'm solely focused on the improvement of others. Understandably, people don't always want that and I'm still figuring out my coaching methods, but I do believe I, and anyone who spends a true week of learning, would be able to teach better. Fundamentals are the most important part of chess. Especially when beginning. You can say, "But If I have an opening It'll just make me play the opening better" or something along those lines. The issue is immediately afterwards. You have no intuition to go off of. You'll play a stupid unnatural move, and in some cases blunder right off the bat (which would happen anyways) and then blame the opening. But when you blunder while building up your intuition from move 1 (at least until 1600) you're at least refining yourself to not play Bd3 over Bc4/Bb5, not playing Bc4 after the Sicilian, etc.
If your in a chess discord, any competent, decent player would be willing to help you out and instantly jump your elo without even looking at stupid studies. It's just not needed. Watch Danya, Eric Rose, John Bartholomew, ChessNetwork, any of those guys's longer commentary gameplay. It helps. Do these types of studies help? No, and the only reason I say that is because they're not well made. A lot of the annotations is just Good job! Thats! Now? The player follows the main line, now what? And that's not doing anybody anything. You have a target demographic, and explain everything accordingly. If a 1600 wants to start learning and opening (or anyone for that matter, just sticking to my philosophy), They aren't going to care about the dude following main line, they're not getting any feedback from That's! Good job! Now? Or Play X. They get 0 reasoning out of it.
And if they just spent 5 minutes (or however much they want) on youtube (Dereque Kelley/Krishna Prem does an excellent job in explaining openings at an introductory level) or Wikipedia (Which also does a great job at explanations) or just asking your friend group if they can teach you X, and they'd do it at a better level here, even if they aren't that good themselves. They'd still. Do. Better. My point is, the junk studies need to stop. The emotes in the titles need to stop. You guys need to stop promoting this, and ask/look for much better resources. It improves the community as a whole. You end up making tons of garbage studies on 1 topic, while someone's compiled books, talked to titleds on the topic and has that study ignored. Lenin's just the most recent example, and it's pissed me off everytime I clicked the study button. But it's happened before and it continues to happen. Kinda as bad as the coaching system, but that's another rant for later. Feel free to post your opinions on these types of studies, interested to hear.
I just with you cared enough to put effort into it. It's literally stuff anyone can do in about an hour.
These studies aren't good. A huge majority of lichess studies aren't good. They're just the same emote spam in the title, with barely any depth or decent explanation while being written by a club player who himself doesn't know any better. It's all junk. It's a common trap for club players to be entirely focused on openings, and skipping out on everything that's actually needed. If you go to the club, you'll definitely see the people playing weird garbage, and pet lines they know to move 20 but never get in a real game unless you let them get into it. He spends a week on these studies, but in reality what comes out is something that takes an hour. Some of that time is probably translating it all to English, in that case I'd understand. But again, he's a club player, where if you took about a month or two of serious/semi-serious chess you'd be 100x better than him. It's all low effort garbage, and if you'd actually look at the guys games you'd see what I mean. Let's look at his "repertoire for e4 players" for a minute, alright? So you click a line, which'll show you about 5 moves of the top 1-2 lines (He doesn't always pick the mainline), but when his comment says "To learn MORE IN DEPTH!!! click my study about it!!!", so you go and click it, then you click what you want and its just 4-5 moves more of whatever. It's literally calling the starting positions your repertoire. You put in a week's worth of effort? For barely any annotations? Not even a quick look on Wikipedia, not even a YouTube video's worth of information. There's literally nothing truly helpful for anyone.
And for those that think it IS helpful, are the ones U1600 that don't even need it. Fundamentals come first. I won't say to study lines and openings, but it's more useful to just watch games that happen to follow in the same openings. It's not learning lines, but when you see Eric Rosen or John Bartholomew play X in the position, and they explain their reasoning that allows you to play X and understand why when you get that position. I'm not even super strong, and as you can see I'm not titled. But even I understand what's pointless and what's not. It's your fault for letting this junk exist. Studies you should mainly focus on are ones main by 2000+ USCF/FIDE, and literal titled players. In my mind, I'm solely focused on the improvement of others. Understandably, people don't always want that and I'm still figuring out my coaching methods, but I do believe I, and anyone who spends a true week of learning, would be able to teach better. Fundamentals are the most important part of chess. Especially when beginning. You can say, "But If I have an opening It'll just make me play the opening better" or something along those lines. The issue is immediately afterwards. You have no intuition to go off of. You'll play a stupid unnatural move, and in some cases blunder right off the bat (which would happen anyways) and then blame the opening. But when you blunder while building up your intuition from move 1 (at least until 1600) you're at least refining yourself to not play Bd3 over Bc4/Bb5, not playing Bc4 after the Sicilian, etc.
If your in a chess discord, any competent, decent player would be willing to help you out and instantly jump your elo without even looking at stupid studies. It's just not needed. Watch Danya, Eric Rose, John Bartholomew, ChessNetwork, any of those guys's longer commentary gameplay. It helps. Do these types of studies help? No, and the only reason I say that is because they're not well made. A lot of the annotations is just Good job! Thats! Now? The player follows the main line, now what? And that's not doing anybody anything. You have a target demographic, and explain everything accordingly. If a 1600 wants to start learning and opening (or anyone for that matter, just sticking to my philosophy), They aren't going to care about the dude following main line, they're not getting any feedback from That's! Good job! Now? Or Play X. They get 0 reasoning out of it.
And if they just spent 5 minutes (or however much they want) on youtube (Dereque Kelley/Krishna Prem does an excellent job in explaining openings at an introductory level) or Wikipedia (Which also does a great job at explanations) or just asking your friend group if they can teach you X, and they'd do it at a better level here, even if they aren't that good themselves. They'd still. Do. Better. My point is, the junk studies need to stop. The emotes in the titles need to stop. You guys need to stop promoting this, and ask/look for much better resources. It improves the community as a whole. You end up making tons of garbage studies on 1 topic, while someone's compiled books, talked to titleds on the topic and has that study ignored. Lenin's just the most recent example, and it's pissed me off everytime I clicked the study button. But it's happened before and it continues to happen. Kinda as bad as the coaching system, but that's another rant for later. Feel free to post your opinions on these types of studies, interested to hear.
