Garry Kasprov's MasterClass was made available on YouTube recently. This is merely the preview.
MasterClass is a series of online learning courses that is distinguished by the quality of the presenters. You can learn comedy from Steve Martin, tennis from Serena Williams, writing from James Patterson, singing from Christina Aguilera, etc… There was an acting class by Kevin Spacey that I can no longer find but that is beside the point. A MasterClass course costs $90 for a lifetime viewing pass but for the price of two courses ($180) you can watch all the courses for an entire year.
If MasterClass was going to have a chess course there would only be two possibilities for the presenter : Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen who in their time were both considered the greatest player of all time much like Bobby Fischer was in the 1970’s when he was world champion. Since Kasparov has been retired from competitive chess since 2005 and Carlsen is an active reigning world champion, Kasparov was the likely choice. Kasparov was not only the world champion for 15 years, he is a prolific chess writer, and occasionally tries to insert himself into the world of chess politics and the politics of the world. As an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin he has found himself in exile in the West where he has a foundation that supports chess around the world.
I knew the Kasparov Masterclass course on YouTube was pirated and it didn’t include the workbook but since YouTube recommended it to me I decided to take a look. I’d hate for anyone to think too harshly of me for viewing copyrighted material so will note that You Tube is protected from copyright claims based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as long as the copyright infringement is not intentional. This means that You Tube must take down copyright violating videos when alerted but is not breaking any laws by allowing the videos on their site and more importantly I am not breaking any laws by viewing the videos. As best I can tell the video has been taken down in the last week.
I ended up watching the entire seven hour course in over a week. The course has incredible production values. While the GingerGM Master Method course shows 15 hours of the presenter in his best t-shirt with a white backdrop, Kasparov looks like a million bucks in a suit and is seated in front of a chessboard in a couple of spacious rooms in a mansion. Kasparov starts the course by pointing out that his goal is to inspire the students to be as passionate about chess as he is which will inspire the student to further their chess studies.
Kasparov then goes over many different tactical elements one at a time – pins, double attacks, skewers, etc. When Kasparov sets up the pieces on the board in front of him, the screen splits and a full length board appears on the right of the screen showing a 2-D version of the board and moves. I noticed no missteps between the 2-D and 3-D boards unlike the ichess.net offerings where the visual chess board are irritatingly overlaid by ChessBase popup windows with no editing to remove them. I expect that the MasterClass was done in multiple takes much like a movie or television show and likely scripted to some extent. Each section is prefaced by a simple graphic with some music which gave the production a classy look and feel..
Each section follows a familiar theme. Kasparov explains a simple position to illustrate the tactic and then proceeds to more complex positions which includes examples from games in his career or other famous games. Each section concludes with a composed study that is meant as a “challenge” for the student to pause and examine before Kasparov explains the solution. The tactics section takes up the first three hours of the course and then Kasparov moves on to the endgame.
Kasparov only spends about 45 minutes on the ending and tries to demonstrate how endings require precision by showing seemingly simple endgames that contain many twists and turns. He pays special attention to the concepts of king position and the king shouldering his opposite number aside to queen a pawn. Then Kasparov moves on to the opening. This section is mostly philosophical in nature with his examples showing more of the psychological thinking behind openings and his opening choice in his must win game against Karpov in his 1987 championship match and even mentions in passing that his failure to break Krammnik’s Berlin Defence cost him his championship but that he beat the famous Berlin Wall easily after the match.
The openings section took 45 minutes and at this point it appears the Masterclass ran out of content. The next hour has Kasparov giving a simul against three players of varying strengths – an expert, a class player, and a player that is a level above beginner. We have 45 minutes of Kasparov walking between the three boards leaning, grimacing, and thinking while his opponents try to match wits with the ex-champ. Not only does the pace of the video slow to a crawl, the boards are hard to see from the overhead and side angles (no 2D board on the side). After the simul, Kasparov goes over the games with each of the players and then gives them some lessons in the opening and ending. Having the presenter engage with the participants is a feature of the MasterClass lessons but in the case of chess it seemed artificial and a time waster. The simul and group lesson took about an hour and 45 minutes and the MasterClass concludes with Kasparov talking about his chess carreer, post retirement activities, computers, and other subjects for about an hour.
I think that any aspiring chess player will get more instruction value from the Simon Williams’ Master Method that I looked at last week than Kasparov's MasterClass. The video did give me a better appreciation of the geometry of the chessboard that is not explained elsewhere and the value of composed studies that seemed to be a staple of the Soviet Chess School. This piece attempts both instruction and a glimpse into the mindset of a champion chess player. Unless the workbook that comes with the course is the best workbook ever the lessons come off more as an introduction to chess which to be fair was part of Kasparov’s stated goal to whet the students appetite for chess instead of hardcore instruction. Since the piece attempts both instruction and a glimpse into the mindset of a champion chess player I would have liked to see more Kasparov interviews from the past mixed in to his reminiscences. All told the excellent production values make this more of an incomplete historical view of a great chess player than an instructional video.
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