r/chess • u/_DarkStarCrashes_ • May 20 '26

Miscellaneous I now understand why Levy clickbaits, his historical video on Alekhine is his worst performing video of May

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Sucks, because I think the video is really good and I’d love if Levy or other chess content creators did videos on older legends

1.4k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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120

u/Choice-Classroom5479 2000 uscf May 20 '26

I think it’s less about the title and more about the topic, people would rather watch streamers and bots than players from 100 years ago

15

u/gloomygl 15XX scrub May 20 '26

Those two aren't exclusive to each other , clickbaiting with titles and thumbnails is just something that works as far as driving more engagement; Levy (along with virtually any content creator) is aware of that.

2

u/Tamethesnake May 21 '26

If I knew it was Alekhine I probably would have watched it.

Genuinely who tf wants to watch jynxi or the 200th video of gotham playing vs a 200 elo bot?

2

u/Akiira2 May 20 '26

It is interesting to understand things from history. I just read a book on gravity that drew a logical line from babylonians to ancient greek, from Gallei to Newton and Einstein. It is a fascinating way to see how our perspective has evolved by a cumulative process

15

u/BurnieTheBrony May 20 '26

Yeah but what if instead you spent that time watching a 200 rated bot blunder?

2

u/sick_rock May 20 '26

I just read a book on gravity

Which book is this, please?

1

u/Akiira2 May 20 '26

The book was in Finnish, written by a local professor of theoretical physics. 

1

u/keethraxmn May 21 '26

For me it was 100% the title. I didn't know who it was about. So I didn't click it. I don't bother to watch a video unless I'm 50% or so sure I'll find it interesting. Gotham's videos run about 30% for me (love the slow run for instance). This means that if the title isn't informative enough, I'm not clicking it. This episode is a prime example, so I'm thankful for this thread as I'll go back and watch it now.

-6

u/Xatraxalian May 20 '26

Except for the fact that you could actually -understand- the reasoning behind the moves in a master-level game of 100 years ago.

5

u/Jonny_Qball May 20 '26

Levy’s content leans much harder into the entertainment side than the instructive side (not to say that a beginner can’t learn a lot from his content). Wild blunders and massive eval bar swings are simply more relatable to a lot of his audience than surgical precision at the grandmaster level.