Back in ancient times, probably my favorite chess content was the videos Greg Shahade was putting out on chessvideos.tv. His commentaries on games of his own were fun, but what I also loved the was the way in which he would analyse games from the top players (he did this for the 2009 US Championship, the 2009 M-Tel tournament, and the 2010 World Championship between Anand and Topalov; the latter of which is available here www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG3oxkI4B5k-lo6FXhg9K9liPeTDkQYvA ).
What he would do is that he would go through these games *without knowing the result, and without knowing what moves are coming next*. He would go through the game move-by-move, thinking about the game, often putting variations he was thinking about on the board, etc., but he never knew ahead of time what would happen in the game.
What resulted from that is something I think is pretty great, and unique. He was reacting to the games in a "raw" way, because he was often genuinely surprised or confused by moves that were being made. You also got some good insight into the mind of an IM as he was mulling over what he would do in the players' shoes (particularly Anand's shoes in the case of the 2010 WCC match, because he was expressly rooting for him).
The obvious alternative which allows you to see the above is live coverage - but IMO, Greg's style of coverage was better in that he was analyzing the games *on his own time*. He didn't have to wait a trillion years for people to make moves in a standard time control, and he also didn't have to say all his thoughts instantaneously like in a speed chess setting (I suppose live rapid coverage might be a happy medium that could serve as a better analogue; still, it's a benefit that Greg got to analyse on his own time instead of being confined to when the players were making the moves). At the very least, Greg's style was *unique*, and surely offered something new that live coverage doesn't, and thus is worth exploring.
I'm posting this as a possible pitch to get someone to do this for events in the future, especially with the Candidates' tournament and World Championship coming. The main problems I could see with this are as follows:
[1] Avoiding spoilers from social media, etc.
[2] Figuring out a way to access and analyse the game that doesn't spoil you.
As far as [2] is concerned, I'm pretty sure you could still use ICC to do this (that's what Greg did in 2009-2010), but maybe ICC is unpopular enough now that people will be reluctant to do it that way. To do it on lichess, I think someone could do the following:
[1] Get someone else on the site to help them (this shouldn't be difficult for a content creator)
[2] Have this person make a study with the game(s) to be analysed, but do so editing the PGN to scrub all mentions of the result; rating changes, the result line, the "1-0 Black resigns" note after the last move, or whatever else.
[3] Have some kind of "black screen" window to hide the part of the screen that will show the moves and whatnot. This may prevent you from using the engine, tablebases, etc. while doing the analysis, but that might be for the better anyway (you could use engine analysis later for stuff you were curious about, maybe).
If there's an easier way to do this on lichess, maybe someone else could mention it. It's also probably worth investigating whether this could be done on chess.com, as many great content creators have chess.com contracts that would prevent them from making this kind of content on lichess using the above method.
What he would do is that he would go through these games *without knowing the result, and without knowing what moves are coming next*. He would go through the game move-by-move, thinking about the game, often putting variations he was thinking about on the board, etc., but he never knew ahead of time what would happen in the game.
What resulted from that is something I think is pretty great, and unique. He was reacting to the games in a "raw" way, because he was often genuinely surprised or confused by moves that were being made. You also got some good insight into the mind of an IM as he was mulling over what he would do in the players' shoes (particularly Anand's shoes in the case of the 2010 WCC match, because he was expressly rooting for him).
The obvious alternative which allows you to see the above is live coverage - but IMO, Greg's style of coverage was better in that he was analyzing the games *on his own time*. He didn't have to wait a trillion years for people to make moves in a standard time control, and he also didn't have to say all his thoughts instantaneously like in a speed chess setting (I suppose live rapid coverage might be a happy medium that could serve as a better analogue; still, it's a benefit that Greg got to analyse on his own time instead of being confined to when the players were making the moves). At the very least, Greg's style was *unique*, and surely offered something new that live coverage doesn't, and thus is worth exploring.
I'm posting this as a possible pitch to get someone to do this for events in the future, especially with the Candidates' tournament and World Championship coming. The main problems I could see with this are as follows:
[1] Avoiding spoilers from social media, etc.
[2] Figuring out a way to access and analyse the game that doesn't spoil you.
As far as [2] is concerned, I'm pretty sure you could still use ICC to do this (that's what Greg did in 2009-2010), but maybe ICC is unpopular enough now that people will be reluctant to do it that way. To do it on lichess, I think someone could do the following:
[1] Get someone else on the site to help them (this shouldn't be difficult for a content creator)
[2] Have this person make a study with the game(s) to be analysed, but do so editing the PGN to scrub all mentions of the result; rating changes, the result line, the "1-0 Black resigns" note after the last move, or whatever else.
[3] Have some kind of "black screen" window to hide the part of the screen that will show the moves and whatnot. This may prevent you from using the engine, tablebases, etc. while doing the analysis, but that might be for the better anyway (you could use engine analysis later for stuff you were curious about, maybe).
If there's an easier way to do this on lichess, maybe someone else could mention it. It's also probably worth investigating whether this could be done on chess.com, as many great content creators have chess.com contracts that would prevent them from making this kind of content on lichess using the above method.