do you know any youtuber with good opening videos?

A lot of the time when I want to learn a counter to a opening, say the Scandinavian, I search on YouTube and get things like-
"win in 10 moves against the Scandinavian"
"the ballistic missile gambit, win the queen in 8 moves"
"the double pawn gambit with 2.c4!!"
now obviously these might work in blitz or bullet, but for anything above blitz, it is a major risk to play such gambits, specially at 1800+ level, as they may have the element of surprise, but that is about it. along with these I will also get videos like:

"in depth theory against the Scandinavian with Anish Giri"

I am not trying to get GM level of prep either as it would take way too long to understand and memorize the variations, and that might be fruitful to some, but at my level, it just isn't worth it. what I am looking for is something which has the element of surprise but even if my opponent knows what they are doing, I get a playable, solid position.

if anyone knows a youtuber with such opening videos, you could post it here or message me.

Hanging pawns.

Hanging Pawns for general theory, but it's a bit dry for my taste.
Most of the times, I simply search the opening name into John Bartholomew's channel and watch a few commented games (preferably from his "standard chess" playlist). It gives a good feel of the plans.

Also, the Butcher (Miodrag Perunovic) has a few short opening focused videos (Smith Morra for black helped me recently).

If you're looking for something more "offbeat", FM Grant Szuveges made (10 years ago!) a few short opening lectures for the Melbourne Chess Club youtube channel that I enjoy a lot.

For German videos, I can recommend TheBigGreek :)

@Akarsh_2010 said in #1:
> A lot of the time when I want to learn a counter to a opening, say the Scandinavian, I search on YouTube and get things like-
> "win in 10 moves against the Scandinavian"
> "the ballistic missile gambit, win the queen in 8 moves"
> "the double pawn gambit with 2.c4!!"

I had to laugh here. Like really. Now there is something you need to understand about youtube. I talk about that even in my intro. This is not suitable for blitz, it is not suitable for anything AT ALL. In social media and SEO there is something called KEYWORDS and CLICKBAIT - keywords are words people search for like "scandinavian" and clickbait is something like "win in 10 moves" and a shocking face on it. Keywords guarantee that people find your video and clickbait guarantees that they click on it. Every youtube who has money on their mind only does exactly that. There is no good will behind such videos and it doesn't matter if it is the biggest youtuber levy (gothamchess) who started doing it or some smaller youtuber. For this reason I never talk about openings at all, but only about middle and endgames.

> now obviously these might work in blitz or bullet, but for anything above blitz, it is a major risk to play such gambits, specially at 1800+ level, as they may have the element of surprise, but that is about it. along with these I will also get videos like:

No, they don't work in blitz either. They work for greedy money obsessed scammers getting ad revenue by you clicking on the video, that's it.

> "in depth theory against the Scandinavian with Anish Giri"

That sounds kinda promising, don't know why you didn't like that video then? Isn't this what you wanted?

> I am not trying to get GM level of prep either as it would take way too long to understand and memorize the variations, and that might be fruitful to some, but at my level, it just isn't worth it.

Okay, so you want to learn theory, but at the same time you complain about it being too much work. Well... maybe you approach this the wrong way. When you watch something like that, do not memorize all the moves, but only the ideas. Often things repeat and some moves are what you would call "typical" or "iconic" or "standard" for some openings. For example the moves "d4 and d5 and c4 c6" appear very often in the russian defense, no matter in what variation of it. That is what you should memorize, not the exact move order.

> what I am looking for is something which has the element of surprise but even if my opponent knows what they are doing, I get a playable, solid position.

Think about it - the element of surprise is only given when you are one of the few who knows about it, otherwise how would it be surprising? This means you need to prepare and decide for your own personal sidelines and own ideas. It is work and of course at the end it also will be kind of your secret. That's why you don't find the content, because tournament players have their own secrets of opening preparation aswell! In fact some masters even have secret preparation they never have played, just to keep it a secret for a certain opponent they want to beat in the future with it. So when you want to find out the perfect line for you, either spend hours of work in the stockfish jungle or hire a coach to help you with finding a good, sound surprise weapon. Yes, not everything in life is for free. Everything that you don't want to do, because it's too much work, applies to others aswell. So when somebody else should do the work for you, they need a reason as to why they should do it for you.

> if anyone knows a youtuber with such opening videos, you could post it here or message me.

No, there is not such a youtuber and there never will exist such a youtuber, because just as any coach wants to get paid, any youtuber that does good work wants to be paid aswell and that is why you will always find semi-helpful videos, because their main goal is to create clickbait and not helpful content. Youtube is free, so they live off clicks. It's the world we want to live in. We don't want to pay for newspapers, media, videos, editing, intellectual property or anything else - this is the result - unhelpful clickbait videos. Now I will react to the suggestions made so far aswell:

@WassimBerbar said in #2:
> Hanging Pawns.

Hanging Pawns is a great youtube channel, as he spends his whole life literally studying and explaining openings. He is about 2000 FIDE if I remember correctly and has no master title. However he does not show you interesting lines, he just shows you EVERY line. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I personally find it quite overwhelming and boring and never actively used it for studying purposes, only watched it for entertainment. It is up to you to try it out if you find it helpful, I don't.

@AACtrl said in #3:
> the Butcher (Miodrag Perunovic)

The Butcher is a very good suggestion. He actually has an incredible understanding of the game and he explains you openings very deeply and logical and it sounds easy. However he also has a tendency of claiming how "unbeatable" openings are he plays while they are not. He makes good videos, but he does not cover every line, but shows the lines that make it seem that the opening is good. The typical "your opponent will play this move and then you" ... as if he could control what the opponent would play. Also he focuses more on untypical openings than main lines as far as I know. But try him out. He is a good suggestion at least.

@pafchess said in #4:
> For German videos, I can recommend TheBigGreek :)

While the big greek makes some good explanations, I don't recommend him for personal reasons. I watched this channel as a native german from the beginning grow, I participated onstream and I discovered that he doesn't miss any opportunity for bragging against weak players, while rejecting any challenge by a stronger player. If you speak german rather check out Jan Gustafsson, a GM and opening expert. He shows you full games on a professional level, decision making and much more. He doesn't scream at the camera, but silently shows his thinking process. This is much more helpful.

All in all, to sum it up, do not focus too much on openings, don't expect exceptional content for free and be very careful on where you waste your time, as you might end up in some youtube spiral of nonsense. As a thumb rule, if something is very entertaining, it most of the time is very unsound. Spend some time with streamers and youtubers that are very calm, small, silent instead of the screaming and entertaining know-it-alls. Disclaimer: I have strong opinion and a lot of people don't like that. Keep in mind that I attack the content people create, not the person that creates them.

@CheerUpChess-Youtube said in #5:
> I had to laugh here. Like really. Now there is something you need to understand about youtube. I talk about that even in my intro. This is not suitable for blitz, it is not suitable for anything AT ALL. In social media and SEO there is something called KEYWORDS and CLICKBAIT - keywords are words people search for like "scandinavian" and clickbait is something like "win in 10 moves" and a shocking face on it. Keywords guarantee that people find your video and clickbait guarantees that they click on it. Every youtube who has money on their mind only does exactly that. There is no good will behind such videos and it doesn't matter if it is the biggest youtuber levy (gothamchess) who started doing it or some smaller youtuber. For this reason I never talk about openings at all, but only about middle and endgames.
>
that is the entire goddamn reason I made the topic. I understand YouTube promotes these as they get the most clicks, and that is the only reason they are there. I understand that at your level ( 2000+ ) people stop falling for cheap tricks, but at lower levels ( <1600 ) it works, dangerously well. that is the reason that people still watch these channels. and that is why Youtube keeps promoting these videos.

> No, they don't work in blitz either. They work for greedy money obsessed scammers getting ad revenue by you clicking on the video, that's it.
>
>

>
> That sounds kinda promising, don't know why you didn't like that video then? Isn't this what you wanted?
>
It would be ideal if I could watch such a video, but such videos are 2+ hours long, I was not referring to a real video anyway, neither do I want prep against the Scandinavian, I took them as examples. as for the type of videos I was talking about, I was referring to Chess Base India's few videos on openings with GM Anish Giri. As I mentioned, these are close to 2 hours long, I have no will to learn it, close to no time to watch it other than when I usually play chess, and it goes way too in depth.


> Okay, so you want to learn theory, but at the same time you complain about it being too much work. Well... maybe you approach this the wrong way. When you watch something like that, do not memorize all the moves, but only the ideas. Often things repeat and some moves are what you would call "typical" or "iconic" or "standard" for some openings. For example the moves "d4 and d5 and c4 c6" appear very often in the russian defense, no matter in what variation of it. That is what you should memorize, not the exact move order.
>
Yes, this is exactly what the situation is. I have and will not for the foreseeable future memorize concrete lines, expect for a select few, I just learn the ideas and wing it from there. it works extremely well.

>
> Think about it - the element of surprise is only given when you are one of the few who knows about it, otherwise how would it be surprising? This means you need to prepare and decide for your own personal sidelines and own ideas. It is work and of course at the end it also will be kind of your secret. That's why you don't find the content, because tournament players have their own secrets of opening preparation aswell! In fact some masters even have secret preparation they never have played, just to keep it a secret for a certain opponent they want to beat in the future with it. So when you want to find out the perfect line for you, either spend hours of work in the stockfish jungle or hire a coach to help you with finding a good, sound surprise weapon. Yes, not everything in life is for free. Everything that you don't want to do, because it's too much work, applies to others aswell. So when somebody else should do the work for you, they need a reason as to why they should do it for you.
>
what I mean by that is I don't want to face prep which has been prepared and strengthened upon for months or years, if you face a move 1 in every 500 games, it just isn't worth it to prepare against it. I like to play the 1 in 500 move, if it is solid. then even at a OTB tourney my opponent will have almost no experience in the opening and only a few hours of prep.
>
>
> No, there is not such a youtuber and there never will exist such a youtuber, because just as any coach wants to get paid, any youtuber that does good work wants to be paid aswell and that is why you will always find semi-helpful videos, because their main goal is to create clickbait and not helpful content. Youtube is free, so they live off clicks. It's the world we want to live in. We don't want to pay for newspapers, media, videos, editing, intellectual property or anything else - this is the result - unhelpful clickbait videos.
>
a solution to this would be to do something like what Levy (Gothamchess) is doing nowadays, I.e upload entertaining content ( guess the elo, how to lose at chess, etc) to get people on their channel, and upload instructional content ( how to win at chess, recaps of tournament games, etc) for people who want to improve.

@Akarsh_2010 said in #6:
> a solution to this would be to do something like what Levy (Gothamchess) is doing nowadays, I.e upload entertaining content ( guess the elo, how to lose at chess, etc) to get people on their channel, and upload instructional content ( how to win at chess, recaps of tournament games, etc) for people who want to improve.

That is not how it happened. Levy STARTED by offering educational content and used his title to justify what he is saying is true and then got obsessed with money and clickbait LATER. I used to love Gothamchess, I was glad that finally someone made good content, but he only used this as initial starting phase, so people would like him, to make money off them later. Either he planned this long way OR he simply realized that he can't live from it without going down this destructive path. A lot of people who get rich, change in character, probably that has happened to him aswell. I've been a great Levy supporter and now I couldn't think of someone more annoying, he has changed.

The real solution to this is that people finally start paying for things they enjoy. I currently watch a streamer a lot and every now and then I give her a small donation. Not a big one, just a little bit. To support what she does. I still have to watch ads and so on, but I do it, because she deserves it for her work. Everybody should think like this. Then there wouldn't be a problem with content at all. A lot of newspapers where I live have died out here, there is no magazine about chess at all and so on. You will face the same problem in the gaming industry. People expect high quality super cool video games with fancy graphics, good sound and superb story telling, but then they expect it to be for $5 on steam and they do not pay 100$ for it. People want everything and do nothing for it. Not everyone, but the majority.

The Butcher is good. Matthew Galchenko has some excellent 10 minute opening videos that are not super theory heavy but just enough for intermediate level. But those are in Russian. I also found a channel that's a bit of a hidden gem, in my opinion called GJ_Chess. This guy is basically a sideline machine --> a million tricky sidelines against a lot of popular openings.

@CheerUpChess-Youtube said in #5:

> While the big greek makes some good explanations, I don't recommend him for personal reasons. I watched this channel as a native german from the beginning grow, I participated onstream and I discovered that he doesn't miss any opportunity for bragging against weak players, while rejecting any challenge by a stronger player. If you speak german rather check out Jan Gustafsson, a GM and opening expert. He shows you full games on a professional level, decision making and much more. He doesn't scream at the camera, but silently shows his thinking process. This is much more helpful.

I partly agree with you. TBG often gets aggressive during his streams when he loses. Sometimes, but not always, he seems a bit arrogant against weaker players, depending on his mood... that's his Greek temperament ;) And yeah, Jan Gustafsson is also a good source for chess content.