By far, the most underappreciated chess content on KZfaq.

Single channel consolidation is such a great call. All I ask is that your playlists stay updated so the binging sessions go well! Thanks to the whole team and to Ben

This lesson was when Ding wasn't as well known. Strange to think.

Refreshing to hear a Finegold lecture with a live audience that appreciates his humour!

I wonder if that Ding guy is still any good

Great lesson. Even greater roasting of kids

I kove these videos, great lesson Ben. Thank you!

2023 and Hikaru is still being unsportsmanlike (walks away and just lets time run out without resigning in a game against van Foreest)

So unfair you don’t have even 100k views here

How are you the best coach and have the best puns / witty insets .. most of your smart kids pick up on them too!😅 awesome stuff

Thank you.

knife f5?

I sometimes like to use an opening explorer on old games paired with Finegold's comments. 65% play Bd2 and 15% Nbd. Now, a solid 20% mirror this game, but black has a vicious 40% win rate down that line. The super GMs who have played it though, things are more even (all that theory you have to know I assume). Funny enough, not 100% of modern games proceed Nxe4, which is a great move, especially if your opponent doesn't know 23 moves of theory as discussed. Instead, 4 people dared to play inline with this match with D4... and only 4 in the Lichess database of master games. The average Elo of that move is a puny 2263 Elo, likely because it makes no sense not to take the free pawn. As makes sense, out of the FOUR games that did that, white has a 75% win rate and one draw. The draw was a 2400 vs a 2200, scrumptious as he must have beaten himself up not winning after being gifted a +2 engine position by someone with 200 Elo less than him. To draw, he must think on this from time to time. If he knows it followed a famous game, he likely thinks on it even more. In that draw, they follow the game up until Be6 by black. After that, the two remaining games had white both play Qd3 instead. Another interesting thing is at the position where white castles, you might wonder why not Nxc3 as there are two attackers and only a pawn defender. The engine announces +8 after that as white ignores the recapture with a pawn and moves his queen into action: Qb3. There seems to be some pressure on black's king after that... as the queen and bishop line up against the lowly f6 pawn. The engine doesn't even do Bxa1 to take a free rook things are so dire. In engine land, white has many +1.4ish moves they can make, but Re1 is +2.6 for some reason. The "modern" move Qd3 is about 0.5, losing much of the advantage, according to the engine. The move the historical guy played, attacking the queen, was better, coming in at about +1.2. Not the best, but not as bad as the two modern players who played Qd3. By this point, there's no more matches that follow this one, and we can bet the four players who randomly got into this position hadn't deeply analyzed the position or else black wouldn't have dared get into +2.5 territory and white would have kept up the advantage.

The best finegold era

I can now cry like a grandmaster, thank you Grandmaster Finegold

what was the reference he made at 13:15?

The kids in the audience are so cute with their comments on Ben's lecture

I play f6 sometimes 😬

Is GM Ben playing the monetization algorithm by reuploading same lectures multiple times?