Watching Chess Videos = Reading Chess Books?

@ThunderClap said in #7:

@MatthewLikesChess Do Both why not ? Plus it depends on the quality & or author / presenter . For example By Mikhail Sherevesky Presented by Sam Shankland Endgame Strategy Video & Books
They both take much time, i can't combine them.

Lemme give y'all a more pratical example. So, i want to learn how to counter the english opening, i can: Buy a chessable course on some anti-english or read "The Guide to the English Opening: 1... E5", a book from Carsten Hansen. What's the best here? Is the answer the same like others given before?

If you want to COUNTER a particular opening as Black the best thing to do is to use LiChess' Opening Explorer. Play around with the GM lines, find one that you're comfortable with, take that line as your baseline, then from gameplay build a repertoire around it, reusing the Opening Explorer as needed. Note, it is often far more useful to look at what players around your level play in responses than GMs (especially the frequency of lines likely to be played giving you rating) - something you can easily determine by selective rating searches. You're also far more likely to remember the lines if you actively build them yourself! At my level c1500 you're actually best playing what is familiar compared to the GM optimum lines.

Different story if you're considering an Opening as White, as you have to learn all the COUNTERs to it, so maybe a decent book is recommended.

In general, one book for White, but many for Black, hence for COUNTERs the build-your-own method above is probably the most efficient and practical as well as being the cheapest!

As an aside: Most Opening Books are pitched at the titled player level as the authors left the intermediate game long ago. As an example against e4 I play the French, and about 20% of opponents play the exchange lines, which have been abandoned by titled players long ago and as such most books barely mention the Exchange Variation, maybe 3 pages out of 300. In this respect both Books and Courses can be very poor for untitled players like myself. I have a dozen opening books and although not useless you really need to build-your-own-based-on-own-games if untitled.

You only really need to own two books - as an intermediate player - something decent for White Opening play and a Strategy book (it's where you make the most decisive errors), for rest you have plenty of excellent and usually free on-line options.

Ha! @Matthewlikeschess, just noticed in your Lichess study you played the French Exchange as White in your second round e4 game. Although you won, give the La Bourdonnais Variation a try (f4 instead of d4), it's perfectly solid and easy play for White but Black needs to be careful and rarely covered in any depth in opening books, should be a huge surprise to stronger players as well.

@kindaspongey said in #4:

The thing about reading is that it is very easy to frequently pause, think, and resume where you left off. If someone says that 7 Nd4 is necessary after 1 d4 e5 2 dxe5 Nc6 3 Nf3 Qe7 4 Bf4 Qb4+ 5 Bd2 Qxb2 6 Nc3 Nb4, you can make sure that you understand why before you go on.
@spindriftdrinker said in #5:
... Strictly speaking that is also true for video, but speaking personally, I rarely get up out of my comfortable chair to stop the video, analyze and restart- so your point is mostly valid.
With a video, it is not as easy. Typically, before one can act to stop a video, the speaker has proceeded into the next topic. After resolving the issue (perceiving the reason for 7 Nd4 or whatever), one has to try to go back and find the spot where one wanted to stop in order to resume.
Finding things in a video is generally more of a problem than it is in a book. Suppose I decide that I want to again look at a discussion of 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 Ng5 d5 5 exd5 Na5 6 Bb5+ c6 7 dxc6 bxc6 8 Bd3. I suspect that I could find the right place in First Steps: 1 e4 e5 much more quickly than someone struggling with a video.

(I just tried it, and I found page 117 in less than a minute.) By the way, don't try it with MCO15.

@SquareTableKnight said in #3:

I think it depend on what kind of learner are you.
Fr(For Real)

@AlexiHarvey said in #13:

If you want to COUNTER a particular opening as Black the best thing to do is to use LiChess' Opening Explorer. Play around with the GM lines, find one that you're comfortable with, take that line as your baseline, then from gameplay build a repertoire around it, reusing the Opening Explorer as needed. Note, it is often far more useful to look at what players around your level play in responses than GMs (especially the frequency of lines likely to be played giving you rating) - something you can easily determine by selective rating searches. You're also far more likely to remember the lines if you actively build them yourself! At my level c1500 you're actually best playing what is familiar compared to the GM optimum lines.

Different story if you're considering an Opening as White, as you have to learn all the COUNTERs to it, so maybe a decent book is recommended.

In general, one book for White, but many for Black, hence for COUNTERs the build-your-own method above is probably the most efficient and practical as well as being the cheapest!

As an aside: Most Opening Books are pitched at the titled player level as the authors left the intermediate game long ago. As an example against e4 I play the French, and about 20% of opponents play the exchange lines, which have been abandoned by titled players long ago and as such most books barely mention the Exchange Variation, maybe 3 pages out of 300. In this respect both Books and Courses can be very poor for untitled players like myself. I have a dozen opening books and although not useless you really need to build-your-own-based-on-own-games if untitled.

You only really need to own two books - as an intermediate player - something decent for White Opening play and a Strategy book (it's where you make the most decisive errors), for rest you have plenty of excellent and usually free on-line options.

Ha! @Matthewlikeschess, just noticed in your Lichess study you played the French Exchange as White in your second round e4 game. Although you won, give the La Bourdonnais Variation a try (f4 instead of d4), it's perfectly solid and easy play for White but Black needs to be careful and rarely covered in any depth in opening books, should be a huge surprise to stronger players as well.

I love the effort you put for this entire message, thanks. Btw, you're right, when i study openings theory, i often look into lichess's database rather in the masters' database where i find higher accuracy moves. In the lichess's database i can find moves that players at my level play and they're the most frequent moves.

@kindaspongey said in #15:

(I just tried it, and I found page 117 in less than a minute.) By the way, don't try it with MCO15.
What are you talking about?

@kindaspongey said in #14:

... Suppose I decide that I want to again look at a discussion of 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 Ng5 d5 5 exd5 Na5 6 Bb5+ c6 7 dxc6 bxc6 8 Bd3. I suspect that I could find the right place in First Steps: 1 e4 e5 much more quickly than someone struggling with a video.
Just for another example, one could try finding the Capablanca section of the video, httpscolon//wwwperiodyoutubeperiodcom/watch?v=tdLZmsaOs4I . Compare that with finding the Capablanca section of Masters of the Chessboard.

@kindaspongey said in #4:

The thing about reading is that it is very easy to frequently pause, think, and resume where you left off. If someone says that 7 Nd4 is necessary after 1 d4 e5 2 dxe5 Nc6 3 Nf3 Qe7 4 Bf4 Qb4+ 5 Bd2 Qxb2 6 Nc3 Nb4, you can make sure that you understand why before you go on.
Could you explain yourself better? I have to admit that i'm pretty stupid.