Can you really become a class A player by studying tactics?

I have read every post on his blog over the past year.  I'm familiar with his arguments.   I'm just saying to look at MDLM's USCF tournament card.   Why spend all that time and effort over the course of a year to hide the fact you were cheating?  To what end?  To win a measly $10K?    He spent all that time so he could make $2.50/hour?  Sounds like a get poor slow plan not worthy of an MIT PhD.

There's circumstantial evidence about his possible cheating, but the real proof would be in the games he played. The people on that site seem to think it would be an inordinate burden to bother to check his games, many of which are published in his book, but don't find any problem accusing him. It would take a dedicated person an afternoon to find out whether his games had a high match-up rate. If they have the book, they will see that de la Maza performed post-game engine analysis on many of his games and published the results in the book. It doesn't look like he cheated, but I haven't gone through and checked his findings.

The book's main problems are:

a) he oversells the benefits of a specific type of tactics training

b) he continues to oversell his concept throughout the book (it's only 126 pages long, and much of the text is extolling the virtues of his snake oil)

c) he himself didn't follow his own advice! He states in several places names of openings, tactics, and analysis that could only have been known if he had not followed his own advice. He clearly studied Kotov in depth. 

So in terms of whether his program works, it doesn't matter one iota whether he cheated. His program doesn't work, and that's the main problem. 

You are probably right. But what i don't get is if you win as a 1500-er 9-0 from players rated the same or higher than you would be rated 1800+ anyway. I mean 9-0 in an 1000-1500 poule or 9-0 in a 1500-1800 poule can't be the same player.

In other words if i (1100) start from scratch with a new account playing only same rated or higher rated opponents i won't be 1800 or 1600+. Try and win 9 games against a 1200 if you are 1200 and subsequently up the rating scale. You must be 2000+ if you win 9 out of 10 times. Sure cheating excists. But if you play OTB as well then you can tell the difference between a 1200 and 1800 player.

Let me put it this way, you won't become an A player if you don't study tactics. But if you just study tactics you will never find them in your games. If you want tactics learn positional chess (from a book like the amateurs mind) as well.

The people on that site seem to think it would be an inordinate burden to bother to check his games, many of which are published in his book, but don't find any problem accusing him.

SmyslovFan: MDLM only provides five of his own games in "Rapid Chess Improvement." Two of them are eight and ten movers illustrating how badly he played before tactics training.

That leaves only three hand-picked MDLM games for skeptics to check.

Let me put it this way, you won't become an A player if you don't study tactics. But if you just study tactics you will never find them in your games.

Rogue_King: Again, none of the A players and Experts I knew studied tactics. Back in the sixties and seventies there was no emphasis on it in American chess as there is today.

Beginners would read primers explaining knight forks, skewers, and backrow mates. More advanced players worked puzzles now and then. That was about it.

People picked up tactics as a byproduct of playing and studying the game in general.

The Soviet players were a different story.

Are tactics important?  Obviously they are.  I think the issue is that beginners are taught to play open positions so they can work on tactics.  Then ever beginner thinks they are a tactical genius simply because they sac a knight or bishop for a pawn on f7/f2. 

As has been stated before.  The Soviets start with the endgame.  I think there track record of success speaks for itself.

The Soviets start with the endgame.

Cite?

From what I know the Soviets included endgame study from the beginning, but I doubt that's all their starting students studied.

Some say the Yusupov books are basically the Soviet system repackaged in English. If so, the first volume only contains four chapters out of twenty-four on endgames. The other chapters are mostly tactical motifs -- mates, double attacks, pins, forced moves and so forth. The remaining chapters are openings, centralization, open files, weak points, etc.

Soviet players devoted 8 hours a day to chess in their schools, sometimes more. That might also have had something to do with it

The player in question is 1900 blitz (though really low in chess mentor, for some reason), and blitz ratings are usually a hundred or more point lower than standard, so...assuming a roughly 2000 player, then going 9-0 or 8-1 against (up to) 1800 opposition is not at all hard to imagine.  The point is that by playing 9 games against only the players that chess.com randomly selected without tweaking the parameters, the resulting rating is only 1500, and the "best" player beaten is only 1100.

If you don't change the parameters like everyone else already does, guess what happens?  You actually get paired on average against lower rated players repeatedly...because the higher rated players always get paired with those who are tweaking the ratings ranges ;)...

SmyslovFan wrote:

To address the OP's concern, I'm sure a person might become an A player by studying tactics, but then again some people have so much talent they will become A players as long as they keep playing period.

However, I don't know that studying tactics is a lock for gaining an A rating. Are there people who just work out on tactics trainers and ignore all other chess study? How do they do in rated play?

I would say that class players who spend most of their time studying openings and positional ideas but have shaky tactics will get the most bang for their study buck by switching over to tactics drills until they stop dropping pieces and missing opportunities to win them.

I actually know somebody who spent all of his chess time doing tactics puzzles. He was very proficient at solving tactics but had a really difficult time recognising them in his own games and had no clue how to set them up. He was a solid B player, but never broke 1800. I'm not even sure he ever broke 1700.

i would like to point out that tactics can be separated from strategy only in training exercises.and then the dividing line is not clear.For example,the exchange sacrifice strictly speaking involves tactics but in reality it is a strategic concept.Endgames too are more tactical than most players think and it is woth having a good book on endgame tactics.

See. Openings are much more important than tactics.

Maybe its all the practice you put in that finally kicked in?  Or maybe not giving a damn?  I'd bet on the practice.

Thanks for the data point!

I can see the combinations as well as Alekhine, but I cannot get into the same positions. – Rudolf Spielmann

I guess this whole idea of tactics being everything in chess  has a lot  to do with marketing.Tactics sell better than endgames or strategy and let's face it the "cashing in " phase is immediately more attractive than the preparatory.I am glad to see that many people here refused to accept the rather naive and simplistic notion that focussing exclusively on  tactics training will get you far.No,it will not therefore do yourself a favor and adopt a more balanced approach in your study/training.

Tactics and positional play should be your main studies until 1800 though. You want these middle game skills before you tackle openings. So just study tactics is half right.

I just started playing Chess 2 days ago. Have studied everything I can find and in all accumulated about 15 hours of study time. I am undefeated so far. (on real chess boards)