I actually agree with you !
Really thankful to Shankland for always including model games in his Chessable courses.
It would be interesting if the author elaborated more on his claim of having an "eidetic memory since birth" and which innate memory abilities he still possesses that contributed to this conclusion.
Hi im 25 Years old atm 1800 elo. winning aboutt 75 % my elo games vs 2050 (counting 8 last games ) elo players on everage just by using chessable for 1.5 years.
As I'm studying chess intensively with chessable though i can say some of the 28 courses i own ( I study 9 courses activly for every opening endgame and tactics since almost 2 years now after 4 years break of chess ) have many model games included and the Author mentions them in some variations where he thinks its needed to look at model games.
For example Grandilius Course is mostly explaining the core ideas in Ruy Lopez even more deeper in the Videos.
I see ofcourse your point of efficency to learn only with model games but it's really nice to have suitable lines which are memorized to stay in your variations so you only need check all concepts in a later stage of a game. Saves time and thinking power to then in critical moments to strike even harder than your opponents.
As I'm studying chess intensively with chessable though i can say some of the 28 courses i own ( I study 9 courses activly for every opening endgame and tactics since almost 2 years now after 4 years break of chess ) have many model games included and the Author mentions them in some variations where he thinks its needed to look at model games.
For example Grandilius Course is mostly explaining the core ideas in Ruy Lopez even more deeper in the Videos.
I see ofcourse your point of efficency to learn only with model games but it's really nice to have suitable lines which are memorized to stay in your variations so you only need check all concepts in a later stage of a game. Saves time and thinking power to then in critical moments to strike even harder than your opponents.
Levon Aronian is a wolf?
While this post is interesting and provocative, there are a few missing elements. The basic thesis: the author's approach is better than the other, possibly more popular, approach. The "proof" (or at least a highly convincing argument) of this thesis would be: players who use the Chessable approach tend to achieve maximum ratings of x, while the author's approach tends to achieve maximum ratings of y, where y > x. The supporting evidence is completely absent! No mention is made of the numbers of players who use the Chessable approach vs the author's approach. The result is (whether or not this is the truth) that this post comes across as an *advertisement* for the author's coaching, rather than an honest discussion of the best way to study chess.
@leakestwink said in #7:
> use the Chessable approach tend to achieve maximum ratings of x, while the author's approach tends to achieve maximum ratings of y, where y > x. The supporting evidence is completely absent! No mention is made of the numbers of players who use the Chessable approach vs the author's approach. The result is (whether or not this is the truth) that this post comes across as an *advertisement* for the author's coaching, rather than an honest discussion of the best way to study chess.
For me it is becoming kind of intuitively obvious and powerful that if you are trying to improve at chess, doing a detailed analysis of variations of master games (especially world champions) without any view of memorising is an important ingredient. When you check out weird and wonderful variations WITHOUT overhead of trying to memorise them, you can pick up patterns, plans, ideas, etc. In fact I do remember one of the Chessable newsletters which said that most instructors agree that the study of master games was really important for improving.
I think if anything the aspect of DETAILED ANALYSIS of model games could be emphasised more in the article.
If there is a choice say in analysing a master game of Karpov - and the choice is this:
Choice A) Memorise the fun 10 forcing variations and give yourself a Gold star
Choice B) Check out potentially 50 variations with the WHY of them - not with a view of memorising or making it a game to memorise but to understand the elements of the position, plans, etc
Often B) will be better in my view. Maybe for people with great memorisation skills, it boost memorisation as cost/benefit. but if you have seen the film "The Paper Chase" - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Chase_(film) you will remember perhaps the person who tried to memorise the case details wasn't that effective compared to Hart who tried to establish "Abstracts" of each case. In chess I like to think of games like Cases in Law but without the element of lies, and mis-information. So actually more like Law than the actual Law. And if we treat chess like Law, we need to understand the cases, and the "abstracts" of each case, so we can think on our feet for unique situations.
It seems to be the downside of memorisaiton may be "false confidence". I think memorising might be more effective for the more "concrete, tactical" openings. But in general, one has to try and understand chess. Take Super GM Adams - he has been over 2700 for years and years, and yet his repertoire isn't that technical. He seems to understand chess better than a lot of other GMs. For solid positional openings, I think it is better often to try and UNDERSTAND the key plans and ideas, and patterns.
> use the Chessable approach tend to achieve maximum ratings of x, while the author's approach tends to achieve maximum ratings of y, where y > x. The supporting evidence is completely absent! No mention is made of the numbers of players who use the Chessable approach vs the author's approach. The result is (whether or not this is the truth) that this post comes across as an *advertisement* for the author's coaching, rather than an honest discussion of the best way to study chess.
For me it is becoming kind of intuitively obvious and powerful that if you are trying to improve at chess, doing a detailed analysis of variations of master games (especially world champions) without any view of memorising is an important ingredient. When you check out weird and wonderful variations WITHOUT overhead of trying to memorise them, you can pick up patterns, plans, ideas, etc. In fact I do remember one of the Chessable newsletters which said that most instructors agree that the study of master games was really important for improving.
I think if anything the aspect of DETAILED ANALYSIS of model games could be emphasised more in the article.
If there is a choice say in analysing a master game of Karpov - and the choice is this:
Choice A) Memorise the fun 10 forcing variations and give yourself a Gold star
Choice B) Check out potentially 50 variations with the WHY of them - not with a view of memorising or making it a game to memorise but to understand the elements of the position, plans, etc
Often B) will be better in my view. Maybe for people with great memorisation skills, it boost memorisation as cost/benefit. but if you have seen the film "The Paper Chase" - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Chase_(film) you will remember perhaps the person who tried to memorise the case details wasn't that effective compared to Hart who tried to establish "Abstracts" of each case. In chess I like to think of games like Cases in Law but without the element of lies, and mis-information. So actually more like Law than the actual Law. And if we treat chess like Law, we need to understand the cases, and the "abstracts" of each case, so we can think on our feet for unique situations.
It seems to be the downside of memorisaiton may be "false confidence". I think memorising might be more effective for the more "concrete, tactical" openings. But in general, one has to try and understand chess. Take Super GM Adams - he has been over 2700 for years and years, and yet his repertoire isn't that technical. He seems to understand chess better than a lot of other GMs. For solid positional openings, I think it is better often to try and UNDERSTAND the key plans and ideas, and patterns.
Of course, memorizing without trying to understand things first is a misguided approach. But even after everything has been understood, in order to get the maximum out of the learning material, some memorization of concrete details (and even, if so needed, of ideas and concepts in order to have a checklist) will never be harmful.
I clicked for the husky, but unfortunately the rest of the article was not as cute.