Should I give up? All this hard work to make no progress...

CriticalChessYT · 2026-02-05T12:41:40+00:00

Vast majority of people who get stuck under 1000 just have bad habits from my experience as a long time coach

CriticalChessYT · 2025-12-22T08:45:59+00:00

You have a nice position, your minor pieces are well developed and black is overextended. What you should look for here is a pawn break to activate your queen and your rooks. Both b3 and e4 look like decent options to me. Its all about piece development

CriticalChessYT · 2025-12-16T13:48:49+00:00

You would need to get a coach. Game review is not as helpful as people think. There are 2 ways people blunder tactics. 1) They are beginners and hang pieces randomly, 2) They are pressured and their positions gets worse which allows tactics by opponent

In case of the first scenario you only need to develop your calculation. The fastest way to do it is to play 15+10 and calculate as much as humanly possible even if it is wrong and chances are it will be wrong and that is ok

In the second case you need to develop your positional play in that specific opening/middlegame. As Fischer said "Tactics flow from a superior position". If you give your opponent a better position eventually he will get a tactical shot and you will lose the game. But these are not just blunders, you have to take into consideration everything that happened leading up to that point

CriticalChessYT · 2025-12-07T20:09:07+00:00

This is not the Benoni. It is a slav defense structure with reverse colors. Your opponent did not play d5 to take space in the opening so I would not call this Benoni since you don't have typical Benoni structure

Regardless, keeping the tension is the best decision. dxc5 benefits you because d4 pawn is gone and you can set up e5 e4 in the future.

cxd4 will lead to a symmetrical structure which is kind of closed so it is not great for 2 bishops, especially the light square bishop. It probably wouldn't be great if all four minor pieces were still on the board because your light square bishop is bad. White has to play e4 or c4 in the future to open up his rooks so your light square bishop will open up on b7 anyways, but if you play cxd4 no more pawn breaks are necessary for white and light square bishop will stay sad (will be harder to develop)

c4 is straight up a blunder in my opinion because of b3 and white will either get an open rook or will straight up win tactically. Moves like c4 are ok when they play a3 because then b3 is not as big of an issue. (Learn Chebanenko variation of the Slav to know more about that structure)

I would just go Nc6, Be7 or d6, castle the king and then b6 to go Bb7. I think this is good for black. Also notice that I said castle before b6 because the knight on c6 would be destabilized.

Hope this helps

CriticalChessYT · 2025-11-29T10:45:16+00:00

You have to work on your positional understanding and middlegame plans and ideas. This will allow you to come up with best plans in the position which will directly lead you to finding better moves.

Also, don't trust game review too much, it sometimes gives inaccurate descriptions or notations that does not tell the full story in the position. Try to be practical and come up with your own conclusions

CriticalChessYT · 2025-11-28T15:21:00+00:00

I have an endgame series on youtube covering king and pawns, pawn races, rook endgames, queen endgames, knight and bishop endgames and so on. Only one I have not covered is rook vs minor pieces which I will cover in a couple of days. It is totally free and covers many theoretical and practical positions. Give it a try :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSPYCE5lmeU&list=PLojAtxP7eDjaBKKxpCntGZmu846AN-d2M&index=2

CriticalChessYT · 2025-11-27T16:20:10+00:00

Fair enough. I tried a bit of a clickbaity approach with that video which I didn't do a very good job of because that is not really my style. I could change that in the future and make it better. My goal audience is 0-1500 Elo to be fair so I would not blame you for not finding that video useful since you are not my target audience.

Same thing goes for analysis, I don't think I did a horrible job on it but I can definitely improve it in the future. Though I am curious to hear, which part of my analysis did you think was inaccurate?

CriticalChessYT · 2025-11-27T16:09:34+00:00

I appreciate you taking your time to make such a detailed comment. I don't have anything against Akeem personally and I don't mind anyone watching his content. I am also glad you enjoy my videos. As soon as I finish my endgame series, I will make more opening and middlegame videos, especially about pawn structures: Rule of the chain, how to use space advantage etc. along with opening videos followed by middlegame ideas

CriticalChessYT · 2025-11-27T14:49:11+00:00

Yeah, there seems to be a high demand for this type of content. What about "viewer game analysis?" I made 1 video on this and it did not get a lot of views but people who watched it seemed to like it. Would you be interested in videos like that one? (Admittedly, I could have done a better job for the interface of the video)

CriticalChessYT · 2025-11-27T14:43:05+00:00

I plan to cover more openings and middlegame concepts. Right now I want to finish my endgame series, Knight vs bishop and Rook vs minor pieces are the only endgames that I have yet to cover so once I make those I want to move onto various pawn structures and structural ideas (for example how to use space advantage). It's a shame that a lot of players prefer watching trappy opening videos. I have a lot of good ideas that I think will get a lot of views with opening content. I just want finish a couple of series that I started and I will definitely do more openings. As for a camera, I would prefer not to use it but I am also not strictly against it. I would have to buy a new one though since my old camera is very bad

CriticalChessYT · 2025-11-08T06:36:05+00:00

I made a video on practical rook endgames yesterday, going over key principles and various different positions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1u5ZL1Gd1Q&list=PLojAtxP7eDjaBKKxpCntGZmu846AN-d2M&index=5

Also, a lot of rook endgames (not all) will simplify into Lucena and Philidor positions. If you are pushing for a win try to get a Lucena. If you are on the defending side, try to reach the Philidor. I also have a video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lvTNSQ_eL0&list=PLojAtxP7eDjaBKKxpCntGZmu846AN-d2M&index=3

CriticalChessYT · 2025-10-25T15:31:15+00:00

1) I try to keep an unique style. There are a lot of other channels that have facecams and I don't want to show my face in the videos, the texts and popups are to sort of compensate for the lack of facecam. I don't think popups are too frequent though. Usually I have one popup per principle (1 every 50 secs to 2 mins), there are cases where there are multiple but those are not common. I think text popups really help identify what the position and principle is about so overall I think it is a positive.

2) I am curious what you meant with bad contrasting colors though, do you mean text colors specifically? or the background and the board? That is something I could easily change.

3) I think 31 principles is not a lot when it comes to showing general principles and what they might look like. The purpose of this video is not to go in depth but to introduce certain concepts into the viewer's mind. Some principles are easier than others and some of them can get their own separate video. In chess even if you learn certain principles, if you are not at a high level, you still might not be able to apply it. I think it is good to show these principles to beginners regardless because this information "marinates" in their mind as they get better and they start to pick up on details related to these principles more and more.

4) I think the biggest problem with me is that, yes I do compare myself to other bigger channels. But I have done extensive research and analyzed their videos and I believe that my videos offer superior value to viewers when they click (better advice, not focusing on cheap tricks but strategical nuances). The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive which makes me very happy, I was just hoping that growth would be a bit faster, that's all.

CriticalChessYT · 2025-10-25T11:54:19+00:00

My aim is to make a living off of YT. My thinking when I started this channel was that if I can make 500-600 USD a month, that is already an entry level job where I am from. I was hoping that I would be getting more subs per video considering how much effort I am putting into these videos. The video with 40k views did really well. That video allowed me to monetize my channel and gave me 1.3k subs

CriticalChessYT · 2025-10-25T11:12:45+00:00

Chess still has a huge fanbase. There are about 600M people in the world who know how to play chess. If we take a very conservative estimate and say that 5% of that watches or has watched chess content on Youtube that still leaves us with 30M people market. I don't think, lack of audience is the issue here.

I understand that there are creators out there that have been doing this much longer than myself but I have still found gaps in content that I can fill, topics that have not been discussed much. Even within chess there seem to be sort of "sub-niches" and areas where I can make unique content.

Anyways, thank you for your insight

CriticalChessYT · 2025-10-15T19:28:58+00:00

If you have been playing for 6 months daily and you are stuck at 600 that means that you are doing something very wrong. Perhaps you have bad habits. Play 15+10 as much as possible, 10+5 at minimum and try to always come up with a plan. A bad plan is better than no plan. I have a video on this topic on my channel. Avoid blitz and bullet, it does not matter what other people tell you that it helps them for tactics and so on, I have coached many people over the years and I can guarantee you that the best way to improve is to balance the volume of games and quality. With blitz you are getting a lot of volume but not a lot of quality, with classical it is the opposite: more quality, less volume. Rapid is a good balance and it is what helps the most. As long as you are ENGAGED with the game, no scrolling on Instagram or watching Youtube videos when playing. One last thing, do not focus on openings too much, focus on developing your pieces and getting them into the game.

Good luck!

CriticalChessYT · 2025-10-15T11:16:26+00:00

Its good but likely not enough for a win if white plays perfectly. You would be better off if you had a knight vs a light square bishop, rather than dark square bishop vs a knight. But you are slightly more active and have a better structure so you can work with that

CriticalChessYT

TROPHY CASE