It is amazing when masters, even some GMs, pontificate about chess and even World Champions. If they were that good at chess, they would be WC challengers.
Really good players keep quite, and let their games show what they know. They only publish when their careers are almost over.
All the best, Joe
Daniel Naroditsky = fish, then? 
What an odd statement to make, Joe. Mikhail Botvinnik suggested, even before he was World Champion, that analyzing and publishing your games was an important means of improvement for a chess player. The criticism and revision of the ideas expressed could only be helpful. Several of his protégés, including Gary Kasparov, followed his advice. This is also the belief of many prominent trainers in the Netherlands, England, and Germany as well as Russia. Of course, Botvinnik believed chess was partly governed by scientific principles. Imagine if scientists held back their research and failed to publish in peer reviewed journals. That would go against the process of the scientific exploration of ideas.
Joe, I think you are just stirring the pot a little to get us agitated. The forums have been pretty boring lately with all of the fretting over the gain or loss of one rating point.
Really good TDs do almost the same thing; i.e., keep quiet and let their work show how good they are.
Really really good TDs, players, and use their voices and ears both so that both they and others can learn.
Really really really good you-name-its are careful about how broad a brush they’re painting with.
I’m somewhere in the continuum between bad and really really good, anyway.
Is he 2700, ready to challenge the World Champion?
Minnow.
All the best, Joe
Botvinnik was from a different period of communications. Old teaching methods tend to continue beyond their efficiencies, not just in chess.
All the best, Joe
I am not sure what you are counting as pontificating, so I am not sure if I am really disagreeing with you, but, for a player like me, I think it is enormously helpful if writers such as Silman, Lakdawala, Soltis, Emms, Davies, etc. tell us stuff instead of just simply play games in order to show what they know. Some writers are better than others at providing what I need to be told in order for me to understand. Also, some writers are better than others at providing material useful for those with only limited chess ambition. The best players are not necessarily the best writers in these respects.
The guys you mention are pretty good writers, and their real competitive years have mostly passed them. Like I said, “Really good players…”.
All the best, Joe
That wasn’t the standard you set in the OP. If you must troll, at least be consistent. 
The two posts do not exclude each other.
Joe, Botvinnik always stayed on the cutting edge of chess. He was in early on the design of computer programs to play chess.
Botvinnik, Alekhine, and Fischer, all published game collections before they became world champions. Even potential candidates have published game collections, annotated tournament books, or had columns in newspapers which analyzed games. There is nothing wrong with that. Korchnoi was once asked why he published analysis of new ideas rather than hide it. He replied that he would always think up something new. Artists and scientists do not hide their work. It is the basis of developing new ideas through the exploration of the present and absorbing the criticism.
Joe, there are no new methodologies in education. We still follow the same practices used for the last 5000 years. They include tutorials (one on one instruction), seminar (small group instruction), larger group instruction (classroom), and mass instruction (groups in excess of 100). The use of books, hands on lessons, lectures, have not been eclipsed by the use of computers, whiteboards, the internet, and other technological innovations. They all come down to the use of the same practices. The speed of the flow of information may increase, but the individual must still take time to process it. In education, we see plenty of repackaged ideas that are no better than past methodologies.
Botvinnik, et al. used a time honored way of presenting information to an audience hungry for insight into the thinking of the master player. Yes, there are players who hide what they know and think that they have secrets to protect. That is a foolish dream. They are always surprised to find that what they know is already known to many others. Some players are just better at explanation than others. The art of annotation of games is improving and providing amateur players tremendous instruction. Look at annotations of games by Nakamura, Kramnik, Topalov, Gelfand, and Carlsen. They are not hiding what they know.
No, but the second puts a rather large qualifier on the first.
The point, of course, is that not all “really good players keep quiet, and[…]only publish when their careers are almost over” - unless you wish to argue that the author of “My 60 Memorable Games” or the author of “My Life & Games” (among others) didn’t qualify as “really good players” at the time they wrote their books.
As I indicated before, I am not sure what you are saying, so I don’t want to insist that I am contradicting you, but you did write SOMETHING about pontification and add, “If they were that good, they would be WC challengers.” By abstaining from identifying any specific examples, you continue to leave me in the dark as to what counts as pontification for you. If you believe that non-WC challengers can and have written books helpful to many of us, then I would guess that we do not have much in the way of a disagreement in that area.
As for really good players only publishing when their carreers are almost over, I think of
Philidor’s Analysis, first published around the time of his match with Stamma,
the Steinitz International Chess Magazine founded around the time of his world championship match against Zukertort,
Lasker’s Common Sense in Chess, published around the time he became world champion,
Capablanca’s My Chess Career, published around the time he bacame world champion,
Reti’s Modern Ideas In Chess, published around the time of the 1924 New York tournament,
Alekhine’s book about the 1924 New York tournament,
Nimzowitsch’s My System, published in the midst of his tournament successes in the 1920s,
Kasparov’s The Test of Time, published in the 1980s,
etc. and it seems to me to be neither true nor desirable that really good players only publish when their careers are almost over.
By the way, the first version of Silman’s How to Reassess Your Chess was at least about two decades ago. The Soltis book, Pawn Structure Chess, was more than three decades ago. The chess-playing of John Emms extends up to 2013, while his book-writing goes back to the last century. It seems to me to be neither true nor desirable that pretty good writers keep quiet before the time when their careers are almost over.
Just more news from Wonderland.
Some would argue that those authors were already WC quality, who didn’t yet get a chance. Keres would be another in that category.
All the best, Joe
Until the internet there were few publications that explained middlegame themes well. Cognitive theory, when applied to study, especially for under 2200 players, requires the development of pattern recognition. The more middle games seen the better development of pattern recognition.
How long did my generation take to review a game and some branches, from a book or article, with a set sitting next to you? Maybe 2 games in thirty minutes?
Databases now offer a quick review of some opening subvariation (the start of the middle game) with 30 or more master examples,. that can be reviewed in a hour. The speed of review allows the eye to catch the common patterns easily. Later personal views of the pattern can be tested with Fritz, for example. The kids who grew with databases know this.
All the best, Joe
There were plenty of books before the internet that explained middlegame themes well. Many of the modern books replicate what was done in the past, sometimes even using the same example games! Louis Blair will likely collate and present all of the volumes, but I am thinking of the middlegame books of the past like the ones by Fine, Romanovsky, multiple books by Euwe, Pachman, Kmoch, Vukovic, Nimzovich, Mednis, Evans, Soltis, and even Fred Reinfeld to name just a few. Of course you have to read them, just as you have to spend lots of hours sitting in front of a computer sifting through endless data.
The “children of Informant” (Petrosian’s depiction) have morphed into the “children of Chessbase.” The cognitive theory guys can tell you that too much data can be a big problem, too. You have to have guides to explain how the data should be interpreted, whether the patterns exists or mean anything. For example, the Pachman trilogy on the middlegame, “Modern Chess Strategy” provided me a solid foundation on the middlegame. I read Euwe’s and Kramers books and learned structure and planning. From Kmoch, I learned to love pawn play. I learned more about Rook and pawn endgame theory and practice looking at annotated games of Tarrasch, Capablanca, and Rubinstein than from the books, videos, and internet lessons on the market today. A five million game database alone does not cut it for educative purposes. Going through raw data hoping to find gold is an unforgiving task unless you are already very highly skilled in both chess and the use of computer databases.
Since I am from the time of your generation’s habits of study and information processing, I can understand that you think that it was time consuming. Of course, we had to actually think about the positions. Some of us were faster than that than others. Modern study is just as time consuming. If we study smart, we stand on the shoulders of giants. True then as today.
You cannot view enough games in any middle game type from these books to develop pattern recognition. You only get general rules of thumb, good ones, but that is not the whole story.
Try an experiment. Pick a subvariation in an opening you do not play. Find 30 games from a database. Try to speed through all of them in an hour. Too often players are too busy looking at each tree (tactics), not to see the forest (strategy). You might find after this effort, your candidate moves improve, from which you can grind out the tactics.
All the best, Joe
Well, here (I think) are links to some of the items:
uscfsales.com/dr-lasker-s-ch … -1914.html
uscfsales.com/chess-middlegame-planning.html
uscfsales.com/chess-middlega … tions.html
uscfsales.com/the-middlegame-book-1.html
uscfsales.com/the-middle-gam … ook-i.html
uscfsales.com/the-middlegame-book-2.html
uscfsales.com/the-middlegame … press.html
uscfsales.com/judgement-and- … chess.html
uscfsales.com/strategy-and-t … chess.html
uscfsales.com/complete-chess … ieces.html
uscfsales.com/complete-chess … enter.html
uscfsales.com/complete-chess … wings.html
uscfsales.com/pawn-power-in-chess.html
uscfsales.com/art-of-attack-in-chess.html
uscfsales.com/my-system-21st … ition.html
uscfsales.com/my-system.html
uscfsales.com/strategic-ches … -game.html
uscfsales.com/from-middlegam … dgame.html
uscfsales.com/new-ideas-in-chess.html
uscfsales.com/pawn-structure-chess.html
uscfsales.com/the-immortal-g … lanca.html
uscfsales.com/win-at-chess.html
uscfsales.com/chess-for-amateurs.html
uscfsales.com/great-chess-ma … games.html
uscfsales.com/how-to-play-ch … ition.html
uscfsales.com/how-to-be-a-wi … ition.html
uscfsales.com/three-hundred-chess-games.html
uscfsales.com/rubinsteins-ch … ieces.html