Levy sacrafices his chess elo for fame and money, which is kind of the best decision.

I will start coaching grandmasters to improve my rating.

I think the main reason is simply that they are spending their time streaming instead of studying and playing classical chess. Their rating peaks were when their main focus in life was competitive chess.

If I started coaching a lot my rating would become negative 10

Levy SACRIFICES THE ELO, and won the match by money 🤣

Levy: wipes tear with money gif

Their weakness is that their chess needs work that they don't have time/motivation to put in now. Whereas, Hikaru's weakness was confidence/nerves that he now doesn't suffer from anymore because streaming has taken the pressure off competing.

Not too long ago Anna straight out stated that she’s lost points because she’s doing social content. So she’s basically confirmed from her own personal experience that Hikaru is right.

Thats I dont teach chess I don't my 750 rating to fall down.

Similar experience but for running. In high school before I was captain I was improving my PR pretty drastically, but when I started helping coach newbies, I stagnated

I know he's right about bridge, too. In duplicate bridge when I initially taught borderline-A (top 15% players that wanted to improve) I was still very competitive. Now I've started teaching lower players (next 15-50% players) my bridge game has suffered tremendously.

Hikaru: "I try to maintain high level play" Also Hikaru: Bongcloud & bullet bongcloud speedrun Still Hikaru: Botez gambit speedrun Joking of course, those are the most high level kinds of play

I'm not a Hikaru fanboy, but he's actually right. There's a psychology behind all these "take my course and become the best at this thing".

Or maybe most content creators just get sick of Chess for fun/competition after doing it for a few hours every day as a streamer. Imagine if Steph Curry coached basketball at a local private college everyday doing drills for hours and then having to go and play 40 minutes at night. The mental grind must be tough because chess is both your job (content creation) as well as your hobby (competitive chess).

And he sacrificed..... THE ELO!!!!

I actually appreciate that he made that conscious decision because one of the reasons I enjoy watching Hikaru is exactly because of it

This is probably exactly why the other chess streamers are more successful as streamers. Hikaru is constantly talking about chess games in a way that is completely unrelatable to the average chess player (i.e. too quickly or too high level). It's like going to a lecture on nuclear physics, when you just took your first chemistry class.

Very wise and a good decision!

This is just another version of "you get out of life what you focus on"

Levys blitz and rapid rating have gone up a lot. He just seems to have developed a pretty bad anxiety disorder in classical chess. But it might not be long before otb classical is not the measure of a players rating

Hikaru after losing to Ding and missing out on his only World Championship opportunity: 👁️ 👄 👁️

How not to lose elo points when coaching - teaching human Chess concepts at Stockfish calculational level.

I went from a steady 850 to 700. In two days. Why? Because I treat chess like a slot machine. Hot and cold streaks baby. No analytical understanding of why.

Levy traded 200 Elo for couple hundred thousand dollars. im ~1200 and ill give half if i could do the same.

Didn't most of them stop playing competitive chess to focus on other things, like college? And they took up chess streaming as a lower maintenance form of playing chess later on because they missed chess?

Sacrificing performance for the love of the game is honorable imo.

I really think they are better players for their rates and can get them back easy; elo is not a power rating but a win lose curve.

Chess still means alot to Hikaru and winning competitions means a lot to him as well. But now Chess isn't the only thing in his life. Hikaru won his first World championship as a streamer. I honestly feel like his mindset is so strong now because he has taken the pressure off himself. And now he is in a better position to win championships. He already had the skills and ability to win the big ones, and now he has the mindset as well. We watch Hikaru regularly beat the very best players in the world even after streaming the past few years.

Levi gladly gave up his rating points in exchange for the income he receives from KZfaq ~ he was never going to be even close to competing at a world championship level. Same with the Botez sisters. I believe Ding will hold his title for years to come - he grew exponentially this past month - never again will he have to deal with the severe anxieties he dealt with at the outset of his match against Nepo. With that out of the way - there may be no way of stopping Ding - Ding versus Fabi would make for a very entertaining World Championship Match next time around.

I don't know why this would come as a surprise....time that could be spent to improve your game or at least sustain that level is being spent on content creation. There are exceptions though, its the one who still play at a high level despite streaming....Danya or Eric Hansen for e.g.

Good tradeoff for Levi.. not raking in the dough.

I'd be happy with 2330, instead of my 300.

I used to show off to my 7 year old nephew and my elo was lower than his age.

Somebody mentions Naroditsky, but he isn't making contents that are completely dumbed down, most if not all of them are just pure chess educations and not really for entertainment values. Not sure bout his otb chess performance tho.

say "from the get go" one more time

Also i feel like them spamming blitz all the time isnt good, like lets be real its not real chess theres no deep thinking which will ingrain patterns in your head for games in the future and blitz isnt useful at all in a classical or even abit of rapid games.

I dont think its because of teaching or anything like that i think its more so because your source of income changes

Didnt see Eric from chessbrah on that thumbnail :S

He's right, the 5 content creators in the thumbnail fail at competitive chess ;)

because unless you were a professional at the top first its impossible to put time into both without sacrificing the others development. Hikaru can do it because he was hikaru the GM before he was Hikaru the streamer

Also Hikaru: B O N G C L O U D

Logic, in order to play chess at a high level, your mind needs to be occupied with high level chess. Why not?

Pov: you get brain damage from guess the elo

How come there is a rating decrease when you coach. Time?

There are two different issues though. One is making a lot of social content, whether it’s chess related or not. And the other is running lessons for lower rated players. I don’t know that Levy does a lot of lessons. He creates video lessons, but he doesn’t teach people, does he? Not in the way Ben Finegold ran chess classes at St Louis for so long.

YEP Content creators and people of that sort.

Start coaching high level chess to turn a 500 rating into 3000

Hikaru trolls for 2:27 straight

meanwhile the BOtez

The only part that's relevant to the title is when he says that "when you stop playing at your peak, you're making a sacrifice."... everything else only applies to Levy 😄

concerns over losing elo but .... he's a streamer now....

I'm really confused by this reasoning. I teach basic math like Calculus One but my math research hasn't suffered from that...In fact, teaching math makes you better at it. Why would chess be significantly different?

idk why is he making this connection to coaching of course if you spend many hours a day playing weaker players for content, you will have less energy to actually train, but i don't buy at all this theory that your chess worsens as a result of teaching the basics Levy has improved at blitz but worsened at classical since I started watching him - makes a lot of sense if you rebalance your training so much then your level will reflect that

And then he sacrified... HIS CAREER!!!

Does that include Eric Rosen?

To be a successful streamer, you need to have at least some talent, but mostly charisma and, in the case of women streamers, good looks. There are many very talented chess players that simply lack the latter qualities that make a successful streamer. Hikaru is successful as a streamer not just because he is a very good chess player, but because of his interesting commentary and verbal skills.

Streamers who teach low rated players lose rating points. Repeat then repeat again changing a few words then make the point a couple more times and..... 2.27.

I think this is true.

What about Anish?

Anna Cramling is up 30 points since the join date on her YT channel. Eric Rosen is about flat.

What about the chess brahs

That's because Levy still harbors the ambition of being a... GM!! 😂

I don't see the need to look down and say they won't be good like me. That is why they are low rated. You can compare them with each other and say player A is better than player B. Or otherwise, It is better for you talk about why you are not as good as magnus. I would listen to that all day

Hmmm, Hikaru teaching random streamers and commentating on PogChamps.

Interesting. I'm certainly not going to disagree with Mr Nakamura, but I do find it interesting to contrast this with the very common adage of "If you can't explain it simply, then you don't truly understand it". The implication being that if you have a full understanding of something, you should be able to explain it to anyone and they should be able to grasp it at some level. But the truth that spending time creating actual educational content detracts from your own time spent improving I suppose could correlate to 'dulling' your own skill as well

Don't want to dumb down my content. Alright Meanwhile... playing vs Vladimir Kramnik. So we have a wooden shield here on e5 and deez knights are very jumpy and I am going to ice skater him after turning into a pineapple shirt wearing en peasant.

But doesn't talking and playing at the same time deteriorate your chess skills? It seems to me like it would take away a lot of your attention and teach you bad habits.

Hikaru drop some bombs 😁

either way Andrea Botez is definition Smoke Show Baddie... fax!!!

Actually the truth is "simulation" As he streams and watches the other players play, he's also analysing variations, plans, objective evaluations for each line etc" Basically, he's still playing chess in his head even when he's just watching. World correspondence chess champion Cecil Purdy said he played very little chess. He became champion by "guessing the move" a.k.a. simulation. If he guessed the master's move correctly it means he analysed the same lines and evaluated all of them similarly. If he came didn't guess the move, he would first check if he made a mistake ( blunder or mistake check). If it wasn't a blunder he would then ask why the master chose differently from him. Knowing why would reveal which lines were analysed instead or which evaluations are different (for example the master knows the plans in the Carlsbad structure better, or the master has a better positional understanding and knows why the evaluation at the end of the other line is more winning) Cecil Purdy swore by this. Because if you play you still have to do a game review after the game to see what went wrong. But if you simulate or guess the move, you are figuring things out on the spot at that moment. It's like doing questions but keeping the textbook open after answering versus doing the whole question paper first, then at the end of it marking it and finding out the mistakes then you still have to study that part What I'm trying to say is, people who stream and keep their rating are still analysing and evaluating, and if they see something they don't understand they still record it and research it later. People who stream and aren't actively simulating or guessing the move.... Lose ELO.

they started streaming because of their rating in the first place

You are true a legend hikaru And this answer is quite shot on the money 👍

Levy makes $100,000+ a month. He sacrifices his INTEGRITY (with those crazy thumbnails) and his RATING (catering to weak players with short attention spans). Hikaru also makes a lot of money but nowhere near Levy but unlike Levy is among the best players in the world. Both of you win. It's all a matter of perspective and priorities.

pure spite as usual

They have to do youtube because they fail at the highest level of chess and they have no real world social skills or work ethic and aptitude that translates to the workplace. All they’ll ever be good at is youtuber influencers. When you look at chess it’s a lot of rich kids. Don’t have the work ethic to make it in the real world, don’t have the work ethic to become a great world class chess player grandmaster. Just rich privleged kids that the mindless masses look up to. At least Hikaru has gotten the to highest level. I admire that about him. Out of all of them he is the best by default because of his actual accomplishments in chess.

I’d argue Eric rosin hasn’t degraded

Hot take!

I'm no expert, but competitive chess looks like requires even more hours of dedication than a full time job. If you also have a job in creating content, there's no way you'd get the necessary amount of time to improve your chess career, it would seem.

The embodiment of “I am surrounded by idiots”

I wonder, if Hikaru focused on classical chess vs. streaming whether he could be a serious contender for the world title now Magnus has vacated it.

Does hikaru live stream the world champs?

I.e. "i don't care about my viewers. If they don't understand they don't understand" Thank God GM Hikaru isn't like that.

What’s the point of being really strong at chess anyways. Seems like the people that do content are still better than 99% of people and are making way more money.

Good, stick to your standards Hikaru

What? Wild theory right there. Is he correct? 😅

Danya - the first "a" is pronounced "ah"

If Hikaru can make me to a Gm in chess and do it for free. He is a true genius in Chess. I am one played draw against carlsen in 1999.

why levy is the future of chess next

Why Anna and Botez on the thumbnail?

What about Blitzstream?

Why does he always repeat the same points of his sentences 2-3 times?

levy lost 50 fide points for 4 M youtube subs, i think that is a good deal

i know he's not really trying to, but this sounds kinda petty and smug especially after that whole chess streamer award thing.

So... Hikaru does care? :D

He doesn't have courses but he has content, which is almost like he would have courses. I will guarantee that if you would watch and learn from Hikaru's content you will be definitely at least 1500 ELO level without any other courses.

Why does teaching worsen your skill? Because you practise less? I wonder how that implication works.

Title is misleading because he doesn't answer why that is.

isn't the best way of learning to teach to others?

When Hikaru recaps his own games I can follow along, but his recaps of the world championship games are too complicated, too many hypothetical lines and I lose track of the actual game. I have better luck following Agadmator's recaps of the World championship, or Dina's recaps, plus she's pretty.

big oof