The real lesson in that book is to remove basic blunders from your game. And you do that by concentrating on what needs to be concentrated on, and not being distracted.

De la meza stated he made most of his blunders worrying about positional junk, and missing what was right in front of his face. Solution? concentate on what's right in front of his face. That's all well and good. More power to him.

Me? I always made (and occasionally still make) my blunders trying to calculate some fancy combination 9 moves ahead. The question isn't are you worrying about the positional/tactical? The question is, are you allowing yourself to become distracted from the relevant?

I would venture that is as good advise in life, as it is in chess.

Also, don't pay too much attention to the "Example Cases." I bet you've seen hundreds of stories of some person who turned $60,000 into $120,000 in One month! Or lost 80 pounds in 6 weeks!!!!

Those stories always seem to work better in print.

"To lose ones' objective attitude to a position, nearly always means ruining your game" D. Bronstein

But you CAN turn 60,000 into 120,000 and you CAN lose 80 lbs in 6 weeks.

Just send me $10.99 and I'll tell you all about it... don't believe me?

Michael from Arizona said:

"Waffllemaster is really a genious, his methods are both simple and effective."

Julie from New York said:

"After I purchased his product it turned my whole life turned around and I've never looked back since."

cool, the check will be in the mail wafflle.

"In your games you have all that you need to train with" IM Johan Hellsten

What's the address???

De la Maza took a bit of time to bash Jeremy Silman in his book.

Silman replied thus:

Mr. de la Maza starts out by doing something I can’t stand: he tells you, over and over and over (page after page after page), what he’s going to do for you without teaching you anything. This technique is popular in many self-help and how-to books. It serves as page filler, it revs the reader into a frenzy, and it obscures the fact that the author actually has very little of worth to say. In short, Rapid Chess Improvement is less instructive than motivational. It incites emotion, promises far more than could or should be promised, and ultimately is nothing more than pie in the sky in view of the true lesson he’s imparting: Study Tactics and Work Your --- Off.

+1 Jeremy

If that's true, that's hilarious!!

He should have called his book "Michael's Bad-Ass Tactics Workout Regimen" or something and left it at that. People would be doing his seven circles thingy and the board vision drills, improve their tactics a little, and be happy.

But no, he had to step into full-on snake oil salesman territory with his one-stop-one-size-fits-all-miracle-cure mentality, the cheesy testimonials, and the cheap shots at well respected chess authors. He deserves the bad rep that he gets for that alone.

+1 "Study Tactics and Work Your --- Off."

And analyze your own games.

The only thing I learned from the Maza book was that there was a chess software called CT-ART, which I eventually got.  The rest of the book I have completely forgotten.  I'm thinking it's not necessary to train exactly how he says he trained.

In old French, "mazette" refers to a bad horse, and it was also used in chess circles to designate a woodpusher.