I agree with you tuggernongy that the tournament games are very instructive, for me also! However they take a tremendous amount of time, and the drastic effect they have on my life and my schedule would either require:

1. I really really want to do them for whatever reason (which it used to be in the past)
2. I'm compensated very well for them. (which in turn will make me really want to do them)

I think if there's a tournament with like 6 games, and I can somehow do one of these round by round recaps in 30 minutes, and no longer than 40 minutes, it may be possible, but I'd have to charge significantly more than I would for a 5 minute game, as I basically have to be free at some point that day to do it, it might result in me cutting short social plans, or maybe skipping my workout for the day and also might result in me even having to do less actual work during the day.

I will try to find a way to do them. The format of the Olympiad makes it a bit strange, as does the fact that the games happen so early in the morning, and so I feel kinda lame putting up a recap 24 hours after the fact. (usually the best time for me to do these recaps is sometime around 1-2 AM). Also as I stated earlier, I was going to do it, I started the video , and I was like "holy shit I really really really don't want to do this". I'm sure a guarantee of some amount of money per day, that would actually mean I could play less poker and make the same amount of money, would change my mind. It's not that I don't want to do it per say, it's just that I have so many activities piled up into my days lately that I feel very very hesitant any time I sacrifice 20-40 minutes to do something unless I'm totally gung ho about it.

Also note that I think I try (at least in my latest pay 5-minute games, although they maybe haven't even been posted yet!) to be a little more focused on mining some kind of learning material from the game. It's like there's a little more pressure to have some relatively useful chess content than before but I don't really mind. But I guess those people who aren't paying for credits will see if there's a difference from the future 10th games that I put up for free.

I don't know if it's been brought up yet but I'd also like to hear some poker talk, rants and opinions etc along with the chess. I found this site when someone on chessgames.com linked you going off about GM norms, overrated players and the US championships and loved it. I remember the "all in minus one chip" theory vid and the long vid about To Catch a Predator- those were all great listening to me.

Yeah I'm sure that'll happen from time to time, but honestly you can't plan that stuff, it just has to happen naturally

I have two (sort of) requests:

1. I love tournament coverage, but only if the tournament has a strong field. I want to see the big names, because that's the people I (being very casual when it comes to chess outside your videos) know and care about. I haven't been a fan of the US championships coverage, for instance, because I pretty much care about Nakamura and Kamsky and nobody else. I've loved the Nalchik and Mtel videos though, basically anything with Carlsen and I'm happy A few dollars for each round does sound really steep, but bring me some great top level tournament analysis and I'll shell out, for sure.

2. I love your scrabble videos even more. Please make those semi-regularly (or, you know, regularly )

I'd want to see that too

ok, so i finally caved and bought some credits!!!

one thing i would like to request (even though I'm pretty sure you won't do it!) is to learn some lines in the Dutch and maybe some 1. ...e5 lines against 1. e4 instead of the Sicilian every time!

i'm soooo sick of the dragon.

Also, i noticed that the older videos are now only available for credits as well... were you planning on making every tenth video free in your back catalogue as well? I still need to catch up on all of those before i go to the new ones!!

other than that i'm glad i could support you... you put on a great show.

Matt

Anyone who made 10 comments in my old videos gets them free lifetime. Also once I have the ability to adjust credits for old videos, I will make some free ones. I'm just waiting on the admins to make it possible! I think I wrote about this on the front page, you might want to read my thoughts on the old videos there

i find it hard to believe that i posted less than 10 comments but i'm still getting charged! damn it let me go back and tell you how awesome you are...

wait, I'm on that list of people that admin did for comments... I'll message Josh or something. (I knew I told you how awesome you are more than 10 times!!)

This makes me happy.

(now if you could just play 1. ...e5 sometimes.... )

I think it'd be pretty cool for you do an online tournament vid. Maybe pick up in a random ICC bot-created tourney that they're running for anyone to join for free (I'm assuming ICC has them, I know they do all the time on FICS)? You could charge a few more credits if you play so many games and lump it into one video, or separate them (if you have the video-making editing prowess), and everyone who watched one of them would surely have to watch the rest... It'd be about the same amount of time as a normal video, the difference is that you wouldn't have time to post-mortem, and we could gain a little insight on how the chess gods think during tourneys.. (*hope you liked that ever-so-subtle idolatry there, haha)

edit: If you draw someone under 2000 in the pool, could you play some ridiculous opening like the Grob or 1..h6? lol

I'm confused, what do you mean?

If I'm not wrong I think he was thinking of jumping to chesscube or FICS and play some of us patzers over there so that later we can pay to watch ourselves get spanked. Oh, and to get your thought to why we were pushed over so easily.

Wouldn't have any bearing on your ICC account. might not be a bad idea, maybe an impromptu team match. I might even pop my internet chess cherry for that! I think that the playing time would be a problem for some of us though.

What's chesscube? what's happening at FICS, they have a 5 minute pool there too?

Zibbit has played recently on chess cube, it's free as far as I know. FICS probably has a 5 min pool, I don't know, never played on the internet before myself.

Why would I want to play there, I'm confused?