Chess 'speedruns'. Fun. Instructive. Calming.

January 4, 2025 9:33 AM

Are you learning Chess? Or do you want to watch someone with true mastery at something explain their thinking in detail? Or maybe you are simply frazzled, and need some low-peril calming content to stop you ruminating? For all this and more I recommend watching Chess 'Speedruns', or 'Rating ladder climbs'. Here's one by the gentle-voiced International Master Eric Rosen (Youtube). More after the link.

The idea of a chess 'speedrun' is that a master chess player creates a new account on a chess website. They start at the bottom, playing absolute beginners, and move up through the ranks as they win, until they reach the level of very strong players. As they play, they describe the thinking behind each move, and point out the sorts of errors opponents tend to make at different skill levels.

The 'speedrun' title seems ironic at first, as they play dozens of games that can each last half an hour. However, an actual beginner going from a chess rating of 1200 to 2400 in 150 back-to-back games would be an astonishingly fast pace of improvement.

There are dozens of strong chess players on Youtube with their own speedruns. Here are some more International Masters (IM) and Grand Masters (GM) that I like to watch:

GM Daniel Naroditsky - very educational, his analysis can be very high level but he's a fantastic teacher.
Speedrun 1
Speedrun 2
Speedrun 3
Speedrun 4

IM John Bartholomew (he calls it 'Climbing the rating ladder') - a ridiculously nice man, my gateway into speedrun videos.

GM Simon Williams - the wildcard! A British GM with an unusual style, who can give the strongest players in the world a run for their money, but can also lose to a total beginner. His way of describing his thinking about the board feels different to all the other chess streamers I've seen.

Share your favourite speedrunners below!

posted by Cantdosleepy (19 comments total)

Nice post.

For me, the game lost some of its poetry once computers could crush us at it. Magnus Carlsen, the greatest of all time, would be lucky to draw against Stockfish even with knight odds.
posted by Lemkin at 9:41 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Not a speedrunner, but I have gotten some solid laughs from Mortal Chess. (I was initially put off by the zombie-themed thumbnail pics and click-bait sounding titles, but there's a wicked sense of humor at work there, and it's grounded in sensible chess fundamentals.)
posted by Wolfdog at 9:44 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

I am so addicted to these (and online chess in general). Some other great channels who do the rating climb:

Alex Banzea
Chess Vibes
Chessbrah

Thanks for the post!
posted by swift at 9:44 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Best channel for insightful game analysis (present and historical) is Power Play Chess
posted by Wolfdog at 9:49 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]

>> For me, the game lost some of its poetry once computers could crush us at it. Magnus Carlsen, the greatest of all time, would be lucky to draw against Stockfish even with knight odds.

How interesting - I actually feel the reverse! Once computers left us for dust, it felt to me that there was more space for players to no longer try to play the 'most perfect' game, but rather play the game that only they could play. Telling their own story on the board, leaning into their preference for positional or romantic attacking styles. Sort of similar to how George Saunders describes teaching creative writing - he's not trying to make his students the best writers, but to make them confident and skilled to write what only they can...
posted by Cantdosleepy at 9:54 AM on January 4 [5 favorites]

Thought for a sec by speedrun you meant hyperbullet which is wild, for example Andrew Tang
posted by juv3nal at 10:08 AM on January 4

Is this bad for the person they are playing? Their opponent lost a game to a (theoretically) 400 player and lost rating as a result, but they actually did mostly fine. I guess it's just one game, but still, I'd be miffed if I lost a game where I thought I played pretty well and I was actually playing against Magnus Carlsen on his burner account.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 11:06 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

For me, the game lost some of its poetry once computers could crush us at it. Magnus Carlsen, the greatest of all time, would be lucky to draw against Stockfish even with knight odds.

I think the natural direction for chess since then - and it’s my impression that Carlsen agrees - is towards an heavier emphasis on speedier formats. Which goes hand-in-hand with the top players of today having grown up with online chess, and allows the game to fit into the larger e-sports/streaming world. Less poetic, sure, than the old days of classical chess, but at least it’s fun to watch.
posted by atoxyl at 11:09 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Is this bad for the person they are playing? Their opponent lost a game to a (theoretically) 400 player and lost rating as a result, but they actually did mostly fine. I guess it's just one game, but still, I'd be miffed if I lost a game where I thought I played pretty well and I was actually playing against Magnus Carlsen on his burner account.

I believe the “name” players doing this on sites like chess.com are now usually given an account setup that allows “refunding” rating because normally, yes, it’s against the rules to make a low-rated account just to crush people.

(in general I think a lot of people would be thrilled to find out they were playing a GM, and losing one game against an “evenly matched” player does not lose a lot of rating by design, but nonetheless it’s not really fair for it to “count”)
posted by atoxyl at 11:12 AM on January 4

I can barely follow the chess strategy, but I do like Eric Rosen's videos.

His series on "Duck Chess" was quite entertaining. It's a weird variation of chess rules. It's interesting how fast he figures out the new strategies these rules allow, just in a couple of games.
posted by jjj606 at 11:28 AM on January 4 [1 favorite]

Ugh, I've got such a love-hate relationship with chess. I first learned in junior high chess club -- in the pre-Magnus era where it was decidedly not for cool kids -- and had fun with it. But while I picked up the rules and (very) basic strategies, I never got into it enough to really learn the opening book or things like mate-in-X for given piece combinations. Even now my best is just "play a basic opening and then develop pieces half-strategically until an experienced opponent eviscerates me."

Now we're in a full-blown chess golden age, with no shortage of people interested and ways to play, but virtually everyone plays the one way I can't tolerate: with a clock. I get the logic behind it, but that constant time pressure just spoils the game for me. You could have me replay a full untimed game with a per-turn limit 2x higher than my longest turn, and I'd still fall apart. Speed chess? Fuhgeddaboutit.

I suppose there's also correspondence chess and playing against bots, but cutting out timed games eliminates a gigantic swath of the recreational landscape. I wish it were easier to play untimed recreational games against amateur opponents (chess.com literally does not have untimed live games as an option). One thing that is relatable, though, is the rise of "600 elo players explain their thinking" videos.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:09 PM on January 4

Is this bad for the person they are playing?

The streamers here either play unrated games, or use special speedrun accounts which refund any losses (or gains) to their opponents.

chess.com literally does not have untimed live games as an option

They do have "daily" games which give you 24 hours to make a move. This is more in the spirit of correspondence chess (you get an email notification for each move) but probably works for any kind of game where you don't care about the time control.
posted by swift at 12:31 PM on January 4

Lichess is free, and supports correspondence games with up to 14 days per turn, or unlimited time between moves. You may not find that many takers for games on those terms, but the feature is there.
posted by automatronic at 12:49 PM on January 4 [2 favorites]

Not to state the obvious but I think one reason people favor speed chess online, besides instant gratification and being able to kill six minutes with a game of guaranteed length, is that it’s harder to cheat. Some forms of organized correspondence chess actually just give up on preventing the use of computer assistance and explicitly allow it. But I believe the lichess correspondence pool at least nominally does not, i.e. they do run whatever analysis they usually run on games to catch the low-hanging fruit of engine users?
posted by atoxyl at 2:15 PM on January 4

I've played with the 24h time control before and the main problem is that games just never finish... One person or the other goes on vacation or loses interest over the course of the month it takes and the clock times out.

Speedruns, especially Daniel's, were what brought me back to chess a few years back. Highly recommended.

I also gave up on chess.com a year ago - the constant attempts to upsell just rubbed me the wrong way - and moved to lichess which I really like.
posted by rossmeissl at 2:23 PM on January 4

Eric's speedrun has been instructive and very entertaining, not least because he spends so much time explaining his moves that he almost always becomes pressed for time, especially as he starts playing higher rated players. He has an impressive ability to reel off a series of winning moves in seconds and snatch victory as time expires.
posted by pasici at 2:56 PM on January 4

GothamChess is also a good source, together with his site chessly.com
posted by DreamerFi at 2:28 AM on January 5

I wish it were easier to play untimed recreational games against amateur opponents

Fellow mefite Think_Long and I have been playing on lichess at roughly one move each per day for ages now. It's good fun. I'm flabdablet over there as well, if you're up for a game or three hundred.

Get yourself a lichess account (they're free), click my profile, click the hamburger, click "Challenge to a game", set variant to Standard and time control to Unlimited and away we'll eventually go.

Lichess doesn't generate ratings from games with Unlimited time control, so if you want your slow games with me to be rated, pick Correspondence instead and set the days per turn to whatever suits you. Slowest available setting is 14 days per turn.

Lichess also offers puzzles that you can get a puzzle rating for solving. The difficulty of the puzzles you're presented with adapts itself according to your puzzle rating, which makes turning the ratings option on worthwhile.

If you want your puzzle rating to rise to ego-stroking proportions, set the puzzle difficulty level to Hardest, which puts the skill you'd need in order to work the puzzle out systematically roughly 600 rating points above your own. You'll then fail many more than you solve, but those failures cost very few rating points and the successes will get you heaps, just as would happen with games played against much higher-rated players.

Also, walking through the "view the solution" option for puzzles that baffle you will often be quite illuminating.
posted by flabdablet at 6:37 AM on January 5

the gentle-voiced International Master Eric Rosen

Rosen is wonderful.

He's all about the objectively dubious but extremely trap-laden openings, of which the Stafford Gambit is the one he deploys with the most glee. Watching him crush a grandmaster with it in 14 moves at the recent FIDE World Blitz Chess Champioship is just a joy.
posted by flabdablet at 6:49 AM on January 5 [1 favorite]