Did "Rapid Chess Improvement" by Michael de la Maza work for you?

Untrack and quit replying to it.

Do you contend that either of these quotes says that openings are a waste of time for the sub-2000 player? Or is it that you feel you do have such quotes and have decided to keep them to yourself? Or is it that you don't have such quotes?

For phrases like "good to great chess" and "strong chess", there is a lack-of-specificity problem similar to that of "much progress". Can we safely say that spending at least an hour or two a day on chess isn't necessary for someone who doesn't care about being classified by you as a player of "good to great chess", a maker of "much progress", etc.?

So, for example, you don't think it is a good idea to warn players that the book doesn't provide the problems to be used to carry out the author's plan? You don't think it is a good idea to warn players about things like this?

"The money you spend [on a computer] will be immediately returned to you when you start winning prizes at tournaments."

Didn't you yourself tell us, "not many preach the importance of repeated drilling on standard positions" and "it's not an idea that drives the instruction of most American coaches"? So why should we take your "good" evaluation as a specification of the truth? And even if it is good, is it really necessary to buy a book in order to be told to repeatedly drill oneself on positions that the book doesn't provide?

Is the "duty" of a book author determined by your decree? Don't you think a player might legitimately not want to pay for pages and pages of motivational stuff?

What about studying both "Nunn or Silman" AND tactics (from someone other than de la Maza)?

I have view about all this but nobody is interested.

I think my participation in this thread has gone on long enough.  There will be no convincing some.  Everyone, however, has the right to learn chess in any way he or she chooses.  Following MDLM is a lot of work and it's not for everyone.  However, his principles are sound and will point people in the correct direction, and you have to credit him for promoting an idea that the likes of Dan Heisman and my son's first coach picked up on and perhaps improved on.  I know what worked for my son and for many others.  I know pattern recognition is the key to chess strength, as IM Watson himself says in his critique of _Move First, Think Later_.  Just one last piece of advice...the less time you have for your chess study all the more important it is to devote a greater portion of that time to visualization, calculation, and pattern recognition.  This advice comes from many, including my son's first coach.  Despite giving all of his students openings homework, the coach said that if you have an hour or less to devote to chess in a day, spend all of that time on tactics.  That is...if your goal is to increase your strength as efficiently as possible.  But if reading Silman makes you love chess all the more and makes you devote more time to the game in general...then wonderful.

You know, on another forum, I stated that in hindsight I realized I studied more than I actually improved. Like most players starting out, I naturally depended on my "knowing" alittle more than my opponent: Opening traps, common tactical combinations, endgame principles (triangulation, opposition, rook on the 7th), positional themes (doubling their pawns, acquiring the central pawn steamroller, blockade,dark square/light square control) setting up common mating attacks, and sometimes "swindling".

Of course, as you face stronger opponents, you realize they know the same stuff too and maybe more. In a way, this kind of pushes you to study more, to get more books. But again, I realized soon enough that it wasn't the quantitative that was going to help me improve. All the pattern recognition training was doing was fill a cup that was already full. Overflowing with accumulated knowledge that was sometimes redundant, false, extraneous and useless.

I became better by weeding them out. As far as patterns went, I chose to study certain positions that were common coming out of the opening I play all the time. Basically just studying what I could do or how my opponent would react just from the "play" I called.

This type of training is highly recommended.  Your pattern recognition cup wasn't full.  You just focused on the parts that were more practical to learn.

I guess a more practical use of my time. And even when I had all the time to study drills, I used it to play over a Fischer game using the Sozin Attack or how Karpov defended the Short Attack in the Advance Caro-Kann.

Kasparov's use of the Petrosian system vs the Nimzo.

Studying ideas became my priority I'm saying.

"... After each game look up your opening in a book (or database) and answer the question 'If I had to play this opening sequence again, where would I deviate?' In this way you slowly but surely learn opening lines and avoid all major traps. ... If you are eventually going to become a strong player you indeed will have to learn a lot of opening ideas and sequences. ..." - NM Dan Heisman in his 2010 book, A Guide to Chess Improvement

"... de la Maza ... recommends ... going through a set of 1000 tactcs problems seven times. One might imagine that a suitable set of 1000 positions would then be provided, but no, readers are advised to buy a piece of software ..." - GM John Nunn (2006)

Here are some actual IM John Watson sentences:

"One way to look at this is that it's a form of pattern recognition, and thus consistent with the most important asset a chessplayer has at his disposal."

"Chapter 4, entitled 'Recognizing the Similar', has to do with pattern recognition (as do Chapters 5 and 6),. This is universally conceded to be an essential part (I think the most essential part) of mastering chess."

It appears to me that the IM perceives that there are other important assets of a chessplayer.

"... while writing in a lively style, [Silman] finds typical and therefore instructive examples. A reader who is given something to focus on in a position, and is directed to its interesting features and challenges, will inevitably absorb a great deal of the kind of knowledge Hendriks himself values, namely pattern recognition and familiarity with the moves that 'go' with a position." - IM John Watson (2013)

"The Right Way to Study an Opening" - GM Andrew Soltis giving a name to a 28 page chapter in his 2010 book on how to study chess

"Every now and then someone advances the idea that one may gain success in chess by using shortcuts. 'Chess is 99% tactics' - proclaims one expert, suggesting that strategic understanding is overrated; 'Improvement in chess is all about opening knowledge' - declares another. A third self-appointed authority asserts that a thorough knowledge of endings is the key to becoming a master; while his expert-friend is puzzled by the mere thought that a player can achieve anything at all without championing pawn structures.

To me, such statements seem futile. You can't hope to gain mastery of any subject by specializing in only parts of it. A complete player must master a complete game ..." - FM Amatzia Avni (2007)

Book is completely useless, small, and has no substance. Also the method he recommends for chess improvement is faulty, unrealistic, and unreasonable. Almost nobody could succeed using a training method such as this. I have coached students from 700 rating to 2000+ in a little over a years time. Taken other students from 800 to 1700 in a year. And all of my students have at least picked up 200-300 points while working with me and most are in the top 100 of the country for their age. They constantly ask what books they should read ect.. I recommend the classics. My memorable 60, silmans endgame manual, my system, 1001 winning sacrifices ect ... Most books are great. All my students are banned from reading this book however or trying the program from it. As it will surely not help their chess at all, and will actually harm their game. Me personally I tried this book for one week, and it set my progress to 2200 back a few months. Meaning I think I would of made 2200 2-3 months earlier if not for this book. All this book did was teach me to hate chess. Turn chess into work and something I hated that I HAD to do every day. After working through the program for one week I was so sick of tactics I didn't play chess again for 3 months. Any program that makes you hate the game is not a program you should be involved with. Again all of this is just my opinion. I do understand that it is a strong opinion. Just how I feel.

I respectfully disagree with NM Iwannabetheguy's comment above. The book is not completely  useless. I took it with me on a camping trip last weekend and I must say the book worked great as kindling to start my campfire.

Iwannabetheguy's comment is really strong, and I agree with his main points, especially the last one:

"Any program that makes you hate the game is not a program you should be involved with"

I'm not quite as negative about the book as he is. There are some people who definitely would benefit from repeated tactics exercises, but they are few and far between. theguy's preferred method of training is well established and is known to work. 

Again, I agree almost completely with theguy. Damngoodcoffee, did you make some good coffee over the fire?

How old were these students?

All of my students are children. Ages 4-14. I have never actually taught anyone over 14 years of age. All my lessons are geared towards kids. I have an IM friend of mine that teaches adults however and he seems to be quite accomplished with helping adults improve. I have never taught an adult myself so I am not sure of the difference between teaching kids and teaching adults. I have had some adults ask me for lessons but it never ended up working out.

I have noticed a lot of titled players bashing this book. I read this book (or at least the part that counts) and I didn't like the methods, but I think there is something to be gained by a few of the suggestions.

I haven't played OTB in 4 years (USCF 1554) and haven't really tried to improved in about the same amount of time. I've been playing online content with my playing strength.

About a month ago, I decided to take ideas of training from a lot of sources including MDLM's book and try it for 8 months and see how I do OTB.

I will be doing a lot of tactics (not to the degree in the book) but I am also going to spend some other time working on my openings, reading through My system, and reading through silmans endgame course up to a certain point of say up to someone rated 2000. In between all of that, I will be playing some games but not a lot. 1 long game per week and no more than 4 online chess games here at a time. I'm gonna play two 5 minute games as a test for simple tactics and openings. I will also deeply analyze my long game through out the week.

I don't expect to become a master in 8 months, but it would be nice to elevate to a class B or A player from this training! (I feel my playing strength is class B right now but who knows!!)

If I see improvement (which I think I will) I will continue and hopefully earn my goal as 2200 in maybe a few years!!! Wish me luck!!!!

I don't know the book but I have to give the comment a tick.  Should be more of it.

It works dude. I went from 1205 to 1606 in nine months (USCF rating). On chess.com I went from 1200 to 1750 in like 4 months. And I didn't even make it through all the circles. Just the first few. I wanna go back and finish the whole program, but it's really hard. Everyone who complains that it doesn't work probably doesn't have the mental power to work hard to improve their chess. Oh and also you have to play a lot of tournaments and analyze ur games. One to two tournaments a month should do the trick. Also drilling chessable openings for 15 minutes a day can help you get a "not-so-bad opening." 

Ideally, it is much better to have MDLM's program structured in such a way as to subvert the forgetting curve (see "forgetting curve" in psychology), so a spaced repetition format of MDLM's program is the most efficient way to go.  There's actually a website that has made this formatting central to its digital books: https://www.chessable.com/