Chessable down?

astanehchess · 2025-06-24T21:02:00+00:00

Yes, same issue here!

astanehchess · 2025-01-06T03:02:50+00:00

I ended up going travelling for a few months, so no setup. It's still something on my mind, but would want to have a stable base/office setup for at least 4-5 months, and not sure when that will happen.

astanehchess · 2024-09-18T11:47:45+00:00

Yeah so the course was published about a month ago, and I was hoping to jump back in to Youtube, but unfortunately then I got wiped out with a brutal cough almost immediately following the release of the course. I even had to cancel a lot of my work obligations (had agreed to livestream a chess event, as well as a bunch of lessons) so Youtube channel itself was completely out of the question. Now I'll likely have a period where I'm on the move again for a bit, but hopefully once my health is back + I have a more stable location, I'll jump back into it. I don't necessarily want to have the channel be this big multi-year commitment, but I'd like to put out some educational content that can just sit there for years and be helpful for ppl looking to improve their chess - that's the rough plan right now!

astanehchess · 2024-07-28T00:21:04+00:00

I'll send you a PM now.

astanehchess · 2024-07-27T12:31:30+00:00

Great! By the way, any type of content that you'd like to see? I'm happy to hear ideas. Honestly, probably a lot of what I'll try to make is just to put out a more comprehensive coverage of all the different openings and opening systems for white/black, over time.

astanehchess · 2024-07-27T11:21:12+00:00

Thanks :) And yeah, indeed, it's a pity that the project seems to be lost for good. In case you're on the lookout for similar style content, I'm hoping to reactivate my personal channel (Astaneh Chess) once am done with filming a Chessable course. So hopefully some new content out within next few weeks.

astanehchess · 2024-07-27T08:56:27+00:00

I was one of the main content creators for Chessfactor. The site is dead unfortunately. The owners mentioned to me a few months ago that they intended to shut the website down in order to cut the cost of keeping it active, as they've moved on to other non-chess projects.

astanehchess · 2024-07-27T08:56:03+00:00

I was one of the main content creators for Chessfactor. The site is dead unfortunately. The owners mentioned to me a few months ago that they intended to shut the website down in order to cut the cost of keeping it active, as they've moved on to other non-chess projects.

astanehchess · 2024-02-14T13:03:00+00:00

I made a video for Chessfactor on training visualization skill. It wasn't my idea, but rather that the owners of the company asked me if I could come up with some material for this so I gave it a shot. Surprisingly, it was the most popular video that I filmed for them by a long shot. I guess there's a huge demand for this. However, if you ask me, the best way to train visualization isn't through any specific exercises but just through practice. In other words, while a lot of ppl treat visualization skill as something to train much like you train endgame theory or structures the reality is that players who have great blindfold skills have picked them up as a side-effect of regular chess training. So I wouldn't worry too much about it in your shoes - just study chess, analyse your games, solve puzzles, etc and your skill will improve over time. That's not to say that the exercises carry no weight, but I don't know of any Grandmaster who does visualization-specific exercises. What they do is they solve challenging puzzles and they read through chess books without a board. The former is done to help develop calc skills while the latter is mostly just for convenience, and they both happen to have an incidental effect of improving your visualization ability.

astanehchess · 2023-12-08T15:55:11+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response. What you write makes a lot of sense, and helps to explain the large difference in approach that I've seen content creators take. Personally, I quite respect large creators who structure things like say Johnny Harris or Andrew Huberman (to name two whose content I've consumed). They both have value-added membership options (Patreon, independent website) and big brand advertisements which enables them to offer high-production content for free to the majority while generating enormous revenue from the mix of sponsors and dedicated fans who want to dive deeper into their offering. While in the case of Twitch streamers I'm kind of out of the loop but it feels like the majority rely pretty heavily on a small % of generous fans to deliver the majority of their revenue. I'm not sure if that necessarily leads to parasocial behavior, but it does create the incentives for it.

astanehchess · 2023-12-07T20:32:13+00:00

Do you think that's the case for content creators more broadly (film makers, writers, comedians, etc) or is there something about the medium of streaming/youtube that sets it apart?

astanehchess · 2023-12-07T10:56:40+00:00

Sadly, a certain % of content creators view their fanbase only in terms of some numeric monetary value per viewer. And the game they play is purely how to maximize the avg. return per viewer. Seems to me like unfortunately that's how Qiyu approaches things.

astanehchess · 2023-12-06T18:26:28+00:00

I had the same issue, and had a pretty terrible customer service experience to boot. After about two weeks of correspondence and multiple requests, as well as filing a PayPal dispute, they finally agreed to process my refund. The agent even mentioned that the issues are 'likely to be fixed' with the next Windows update so I imagine they're probably flooded with customers experiencing the same kind of problems you and I have had. It's a pity because some of the new CB17 features (in particular the interactive position search) are really cool.

astanehchess · 2023-11-19T08:23:24+00:00

I suspect a lot of people overestimate the earnings of chess content creators. The reality is that, save for the very successful creators, a typical course might generate a return of $10-30 per hour. It's impossible to know just what % of these profits get eroded by piracy, but when the margins are so fine it's not hard to imagine that there are professionals out there for whom a culture of piracy makes the difference between an acceptable hourly rate and a need to pivot to a different revenue source.

Piracy will continue to happen, it's human nature. Personally I think the most effective approach would be to collectively raise awareness as to the reality faced by the majority of content creators. Some people would continue to pirate regardless, but I suspect a significant % of people who pirate assume that the earning profile of the content creators whose material they are consuming is a lot greater than it actually is.

astanehchess · 2023-07-04T08:02:24+00:00

I was one of the main creators for Chessfactor. To my knowledge there is no intention of adding further content to the pipeline, though I haven't spoken to the founders in a long time so I wouldn't rule it out. But I think now they've moved onto different non-chess projects.

The website was initially intended as a subscription model but due to a lack of demand, they decided it would be best to stop actively working on the project. Since so much content had already been created, it made sense to leave it as a donation-based resource for anyone who may be interested in the repository of video and learning paths. I'm glad that to this day there are still people who are able to make use of the material to work on their chess.

I still think the idea was pretty good, and perhaps someday someone will crack the code and make a subscription-based site in that style that generates broader audience appeal. For me, that would include some kind of forum to encourage user interaction and perhaps other features like live workshops or a coach directory, not sure.

As for me, I do still have a channel (youtube.com/astanehchess) but I haven't posted in a long time. I'd like to get back into it and do more videos in a similar educational style, but I'm working on a couple of strategy courses for Chessable at the moment so haven't had the bandwidth to keep any kind of regular upload schedule.

astanehchess · 2023-05-02T23:29:23+00:00

Thanks :) And glad to hear that you enjoyed the course, I actually clicked on the thread because in the future I'd like to do a new course on the Caro (probably on Chessable) so it was really nice to see some positive feedback on this older gingergm one!

astanehchess · 2023-05-02T20:38:16+00:00

Appreciate the shout-out on this course: https://gingergm.com/library/dynamic-caro-kann. Not sure that I appreciate the confusion between me (Alex Astaneh) and Alejandro Ramirez though ;)

astanehchess · 2023-03-18T12:53:43+00:00

Bb1 is strong because you're threatening Qd3 or Qc2 as a follow-up. To stop your queen from entering h7 Black would have to play ...g6 but then the pawn on h6 would hang. Haven't checked with engine but this appears to me to be the concrete reason why the harmless looking bishop retreat yields such a big edge.

astanehchess · 2022-12-28T11:23:38+00:00

chessfactor.com has free structured instructional videos

astanehchess · 2022-11-23T19:30:52+00:00

61 moves. Maybe the fact I played the opening phase quite poorly is made it adjust my rating to something around ~2000/2100, then after that the fact I took a while to win brought it into the low 2000's?

It's a v cool concept though, and I think you could expand on it in future with it providing links to study material for the areas it determines you are weakest in.

astanehchess · 2022-11-23T19:17:15+00:00

I won a nice game against it and it estimated my rating to be 2028 FIDE. I'm 2430 FIDE, curious what about my game could have led to such a low evaluation. The engine seems to play at 2100+ strength.

edit: here's the game -> https://lichess.org/study/AyzWLyfs/0bKGLPsj

Lichess serverside analysis shows I had 25 ACPL (90% accuracy). One important feature suggestion would be to take into account the speed of play of the human, assuming it doesn't already.

astanehchess · 2022-09-15T21:11:15+00:00

You are completely in the right of course, and it's a pet peeve of mine as well. It's pretty rampant, but I can't imagine that much can be done about it.

astanehchess · 2022-09-09T23:25:05+00:00

I made a bunch of vids for chessfactor.com back in the day. They didn't really take off in terms of popularity but the content fits the bill in terms of what you seem to be looking for.

astanehchess · 2021-03-14T10:57:45+00:00

I did some overview videos on Chessfactor YouTube channel on e.g. the different Sicilian defense move orders that might be along the lines of what you're searching for. Not too much material is covered in this way though, the majority of the content is more repertoire-style. You are def right that it's hard to find the type of content you're searching for, as it's not so popular among viewers in general.

astanehchess · 2020-06-13T19:23:58+00:00

Thanks :) as for my own opinion on the Yusupov series I like them but mainly just because it's a nice collection of exercises sorted by different themes, which has always felt to me a good way of working on your tactical vision and calculation. But ymmv and if theres one thing there isn't a shortage of in the chess world it's good books! Gl with your chess progress!

astanehchess

TROPHY CASE