The Backyard Professor

I loled at his "Grwo-ko Piano."

When I first saw his vid on his game in the Fried Liver Attack, I thought he was trying to make a mockery of Silman's ideas for the first 4 mins. Then I found out he was actually being serious...

I worry about if all his videos are like that, because inexperienced chess players could easily be influenced in a bad way. For example, after Ke8, he said he had a very good position - when in fact, it was completely the opposite. Also, he made it sound as if his opponent was a patzer right through the game, even up to Qf3+ where it was all theory (allbeit the Queen sac was pretty horrific) but this again was wrong, because all the moves up to Qxc6 were completely natural. I, like some other people here, found the video almost laughable.

It's as bad as I remember:

"My reaction surprised him. With my king I took his knight. And it shocked him 'what are you doing, I've never had anyone take my knight like that before'".

Yeah I'm sure someone playing this knight sacrifice didn't know you could capture it. But nice fictional dialogue.

"He takes my central knight with his bishop, because of course, can you guess what he wants to do? Woah, he wants to come up here and checkmate me."

Umm, probably quite wants the piece too...

"You are gonna get your butt kicked...if this is how you play".

A pawn up with your opponents king in the centre unable to castle. Yeah, terrible.

This sounds like chess satire. Funny as!

And then people criticise this sort of disinformation, and people respond with "he's trying to help", "you don't need to be a grandmaster to teach chess", "he's fun" etc.

True enough, but you can't make it illegal to do what he's doing. It's not like he's lying about his rating, and charging for lessons.

Backyard cops are the worst of both worlds.

Even low rated players probably have the since not to take him seriously.

They arrest people playing chess in their backyard.

+1. The guy discredited himself right there.

Oh, yeah? After watching the video in post #18, I was sure he was Nick Nolte.

Since when is chess required to obtain a Ph.D in backyardery?  Seriously, it's just a nickname his wife gave to him, ease up mate, nobody's forcing you to watch his videos if you don't want to.

"Backyard" hehe.... You know what I'm sayin' here?  "The Back...yard...Professor...." heheheh.

Oh, no! Me as an idiot who does not know what he is talking about but is interested in chess got misled by the dreaded backyard professor of doom!

For a moment I thought there was no further reason to obtain books written by Kasparov, Seirawan, McDonnald, Silman etc. because I can watch Backyard professor's videos for free!

Fortunately, joeydvivre made me see the right thing. Shame on johnmusacha who drew my attention to this video which made me laugh for 15 minutes.

Lolz

Although I have not read all posts, I support the majority whether serious or not.  Not only is this professor nuts as far as chess is concerned, but describes himself as a "power up" (his words) right before white blunders his queen, when he (black) is a pawn down with a centered, open king and neither side is developed.

Now, he apparently played this game.  Analysed this game, video'd this game, must have re-watched it, and then posted it to youtube.

Such is not a spacey error, such is compulsive hallucination.  Truly scary.  I question whether the game was ever played.  He probably hallucinated the whole thing.

joeydvivre: well, I guess that's your opinion, and I'm not going to change it.  Stay clear of computer programming by the way, you wouldn't believe the number of non-PhD's who dare write blog posts on how to write computer programs.

well, joey, you made some assumptions about me in some other thread. Now I got back at you, and all is good. I hope you will one day have a laugh, too.  Just practice a few variations of humor, and you will understand both the professor an me a bit better.

His rating, according to uschess.org is 789