I spend about half an hour every day on Youtube. I watch piano tutorials, go instruction, table tennis, snooker, cooking and follow a few science channels. On occasion it is suggested that I watch a chess video, and sometimes I comply. As with those other areas that I follow, I am generally impressed with the quality of some of the stuff you can find out there. I have always been a fan of Simon Williams’ channel “Ginger GM”), since his love for the game resonates with mine, and Matthew Sadler’s “Silicon Road” sometimes make me question my (otherwise) rather negative idea of how deep you can go with a visual medium. I also try to keep track of what is out there; serious coaches, studio clips from big tournaments, uploaded streams and studio clips from big events. Lately I have gotten more and more suggestions from e-sport events that involve chess, and in more than one of these I have seen strong chess players get questions like: “Do you guys think online chess is an e-sport?”, and further, “does it qualify for being an e-sport”. And the strong player usually makes some excellent advertisement for chess in general and then rounds it off with a resounding “yes!”. Personally, I think asking these questions is a bit like asking the chef of a Michelin-recommended restaurant who has just produced a hamburger: “do you think you qualify as a fast food restaurant now?”. or asking an opera singer who just sang a piece of modern pop music “are you a pop star now?” I like both pop music and fast food (if it is done well), and e-sport is an amazingly rich environment, but if I was asked something like this, I would have to bite my tongue not to say, “Do we want it to be?” I believe chess, shogi, go and the likes of them, belong to a different category of games, for many reasons, but the main one being that one can become obsessed with them and stay obsessed for a lifetime. They are each a proper World of mind-boggling complexity and knowing one of them well is like carrying around a planet that circles your head, always; a place to where you can withdraw at any given time. These games are commitments that last, and in order to get better at them you must analyze your mistakes and learn from them, again, and again, and again… If you do not like commitment, then I recommend you to stay away from chess, and go. And when it comes to dexterity, I would rather watch someone playing the piano, with the sound turned off, than watching someone play a video game. Well, each one to his own poison.
Considering the next game, and many others, it stands to reason that no one has analyzed his mistakes better than Magnus Carlsen:
Next Friday I’ll share Andersson – Portisch, Manila 1974 with you. It was one of the first games I ever played through, and possibly the first where I encountered this style of playing.