Is Ben Finegold as big a jerk as he seems in his videos?

He is friendly.  He's even being friendly in the videos.  It's playful banter, nothing more.

There's a difference between being a kid, who has known Ben Finegold, for I don't know, but long time. And then to someone who only watched one video, 10 videos of him. I don't know how many, even 100. There's a difference between sarcasming in life, and then seeing someone doing over it a computer. There's a difference between that these kids are actually sitting in the room with him, feelign the atmosphere, and then you sitting home on a chair watching youtube.

 Take a look around, they're already here  I was just wandering around chess.com profiles and other posts and wondering why we are so very very rude to each other, and somehow ended up here.

Anyhow, if I was a Finegold student, I'd probably wanna prove him wrong.. which would probably make me wanna study harder. Thats one way to teach things, but it's not an easy one to pull. A lot of kids and young ones will bore to death if they have to listen classical chess literature being read aloud, I imagine. 

He's joking.... I love his videos. I enjoy Yasser's as well. But GM Finegold is hilarious and really makes the lectures fun.

I was just watching a different video by him, to see if it was just this video, and, while his jokes were still there, they were toned down, and the video was actually very good.

Finegold just appears to be more cynical overall compared to Seirawan, and the difference comes out in their lecturing styles. And cynical-esque humor is something that, from my experience, people either get or they don't.

Personally, I think Finegold can be outright hilarious with some of his lectures. And done right, I think his cynical/wise-guy humor can enhance the lecture material very well.
That typed, his later lectures seem (increasingly) to spend less time on the chess material (where he perfunctorily scrolls through the moves in a game he's covering) and more on tired, rehashed, overly forced humor lines. Who knows...maybe he's feeling more stressed in his personal life or something, and it's coming across in his lectures?

Anyway, I contend that his humor is either something that will click with you, or it won't.

Mike Kummer needs to be fired. He damages kids' understanding more than he helps it. I'm surprised he's even 1770 rated, considering he thinks the QGD is a blunder and the two knights defence is refuted by Ng5.

I've seen Ben in person.  I've also seen his son, Spencer, in person and faced his son head-to-head in the Chicago Open.

You would be shocked to find out they were related.

Ben is a great guy.  You have to get used to his twisted humor, but he is just hilarious and a great guy to hang around.

His son, Spencer, is a stuck up good-for-nothing pain in the rear end.  I face him in the 2013 Chicago Open, am down a pawn in a Rook and Pawn ending, sacrifice by Rook to achieve a drawn R versus P ending by getting my pawn to f7.  I offer a draw, and he gets up and leaves without responding.  15 minutes later, I report and ask the director if I should report abondonment or what?  The director had to hunt him down to acknowledge that he was accepting the draw.

A year and a half later, in Charlotte, at a local event, he's the last game done in round 1.  They start analyzing, and I notice they are done and ask who won.  He says "nobody", like he's some being some smarta$$ about it.  Why can't you just say it was a draw?  He's also given me a few snide looks since our match-up in 2013 in the times I've ran into him in Charlotte.

The Finegolds are like Jekell (Ben) and Hyde (Spencer).

His jokes would be fine if his audience were adults. Kids only hear him insulting them.

not true

Not true that his jokes would be fine if his audience were adults? Or not true that the kids do not have a sophisticated sense of humor and so only hear him insulting them?

The biggest thing I dislike about tournaments is playing children, they tend to behave like you described.  But I'd give the kid the benefit of the doubt.

That kid is 24 right now....which would make him 22 in 2013.

That's a good 4 years older than I am, and I agree that sort of behavior is has no place anywhere, let alone a chess tournament.

If I was raised by a father that constantly told me that I was too stupid to understand something, I probably would have the same behavioral problems.

Ben probably did not intend that. However, thats basic psychology.

Not true that the kids don't understand.  Have you seen him with kids in person?

Well if he was boring this thread would be done. At least he has garneshed attention; which is hard to do giving a chess lecture.

I could only stand 2 minutes of GM finegold. he seems like a total jerk, especially since he's being incredibly mean to those kids. I don't think he means to be rude, but he can't let a single opportunity for even the lamest joke to go by. cut the jokes, ALL of them and he might become a good teacher. if someone kept telling me I don't understand anything about chess It'd be very distracting to say the least. leave the jokes to the comedians.

Seinfeld probably went way over his head, since he knows squat about funny. there, can I teach chess lessons now?

Finegold shares his brilliant wit on another site quite freely. He tends to be condescending and sarcastic. Sometimes, he's funny.

I have a friend, an educator by profession, who took a few lessons from Finegold. He said he learned almost nothing and Finegold had no clue how to teach. Finegold's videos reflect his personality pretty well.

he reminded me of a film.

I learned that (white) f4 wants to play f5. I had thought that that was wrong as it distracts from the center. I learned that from the OP's Ben Finegold site.

I also watched Ben's "accidental sacrifice" on youtube. Ben had the honesty to admit that his brilliancy was because he made what he thought were blunders. Humble honesty!

However, I still think that insulting kids ( its ok to insult us adults, we are, or at least should be,strong enough) is very wrong!