Year 2 and 3, Reformed

Not sure if you all know about this again; ICS has a new bargain promo which I believe will be hated by all who subscribed Year2 and Year3 before: You can get both of the courses for the price of 1. That's for 27 bucks a month- no need to subscribe to full year.

How I wish I was done with Year 1 one. It's still a waste of time and money for me to subscribe to those additional courses...  

Curious, why do you say "it's still a waste of time and money for me to subscribe to those additional courses"?

Simply because you have not finished the main course?

Could you not subscribe for the 2 for 1 and do it after you finish Yr 1? I mean...no telling how long the special will last.

Good to know about the special, thanks Ernest :-)

I said it will be a waste because I'm sure I won't have either the time or discipline to study them anyway. But of course, if you have registered in the core course you have the option skip it and go with Y2 and Y3.

I'd like to see a much more detailed content list before I even consider it.

BorgQueen wrote:I'd like to see a much more detailed content list before I even consider it.

Just annotated games. One year on games for players from amateur to the top professionals supplemented with videos on tactics and endgame technique. Other year annotated games for each of the major opening systems (with videos of each system).

Yeah, see I'm not going to pay $40 a month for access to annotated games.

It would be good for them to show exactly how annotated by giving access to one of them so people like me can see what level of detail and instruction is given in these annotated games.

$40? No, it has been repriced to $27 per month for two of them. Huge saving really for those who need it.

$30. The AUD is doing better than I thought ^_^

Still a lot of money for annotated games of unknown detail.

They're listening, BQ. Sample lessons both in PDF and videos are available on the site for the additional courses. Well, i'm not sure if they were there all along!?

Ok... thanks. Going to check them out tonight.

$30 a month isn't a lot of money in the greater scheme of things... I'll do some considering tonight.

Gotta give some serious consideration to launching another ICS forum though. I hate how this one logs me out and stops sending me e-mail notifications whenever it decides to. It makes this whole forum very very quiet.

I've subscribed...will report back after I've had a chance to take a look.

OK Leavenfish, please do. I'm wanting to hear critical evaluations for those additional courses..

Me too... obviously.

Last year I started with Y2 of the course when I accepted the discount offer back then.

Now I reached month 11, and have seen the videos till month 9 and the PDF lectures till midst month 2?

My expierence with Y2 is that studying the PDF takes me an awful lot of time and energy. I spent about 4-5 Hours for each lecture.
Maybe it is just me, but usually I don't have so much time at once, so I'm forced to divide it in parts.The disadvantage of dividing is that you lose the focus of the lecture.
The quality of the pdf are OK, but I am not sure if it helps me a lot in my OTB games although the ideas in the annotations will popup in my mind sometimes when I play simulair positions in my OTB games. The advantage is that the lectures covering the whole game, so the moves (and mistakes) are explained from beginning to the end. a Chessbase file is included in every month, which is very useful to use when to study the side lines and return quickly to the main line. (I study the lecture on a real board and the laptop is showing the actual (mainline) setup) Otherwise I have to set the pieces back to the main line over and over again by heart with the chance that I make the wrong setup and don't understand it anymore.

I am not impressed by the quality of the videos regarding audio. (As all of the videos of ICS, Y1 and Y2). They really should make them much more better.
Sometimes it is very annoying to hear the background noises!! Also I haven't found a media player which is able to play the videos eg. halfway.
Then the audio and video are not in sync anymore, which I haven't faced with the Smirnov material.
However the information represented in the videos are great !!

Have you tried VLC player? I haven't had any problems at all with it. I did have some problems with some versions of Adobe though and abandoned it.

I have had no problems with the WIMPY player that ICS recommends, and VLC also works fine. Both are free.

WIMPY player is till now the best player on my computer that could run the ICS video's but isn't available for my android tablet. VLC player is alway's failing when I want to start the video other than from the beginning or when I want to rewind back a bit. Audio and video will go out of sync.
All other special *.flv players available for the android that I have tried have the same annoying habit.

Thanks :-)

Good, honest feedback!