Outcome of de la Maza's Seven Circles Program

I think there is plenty of cognitive science that his approach panders to, particularly how the mind chunks and develops templates.  One who develops the chunks and templates from the piece arrangements that repeatedly arise on the board results in a player being able to see, at a glance, the tactic.  At the highest level, those things that we call basic tactics, even the ones that might be more than 4 or 5 moves, are seen at a glance.  MDLM's program is supposed to be efficient in generating those chunks and templates, first through calculation, then through pattern recognizing.

I have zero interest in posting my identity for the amusement of internet nutters.  Sure, I could post a name, what does that prove?  Nothing.

If it's controversial for a 2100 on here to claim to be 2100 OTB then you must find controversy everywhere.

To me, it sounds like he knows serious work is ahead.  There's no way to become a legitimately strong titled player with tactics alone.

Don't blame coaches and books, blame students :p

People should look at what they can include, not what they can leave out. Using rapid chess improvement as a panacea is just as foolish as MdlM when he tried using Silman as a panacea. A more common false hope, it seems, is opening study.

Do you need tactics? Of course. Just don't think of it as the first and last thing you do.

Ah, I should add, that's what the tactics vs strategy mindset seems like to me. There is no vs. because the focus of "what can I leave out?" is incorrect to begin with.

And over 4,000 points in a little over ten years right? uhh, no it doesn't work like that, sorry. I can easily gain or lose 200+ points in blitz depending on how much I'm playing and how much I'm trying to win.    

My only concern with online servers is the rating (I get hung up on numbers...it's just my personality to do so) and the problems are sometimes not as good as those in books.  I have found taking your suggestion to be very reasonable on chess.emrald (if I don't pay attention to the rating, because you have 3 seconds or so to solve every puzzle.  Doing this on chess tactics trainer isn't easy (possible?) because, in most cases, the tactics have multiple winning moves and only the winningest move is considered correct.  That means having to do more than pattern recognize on each.  It's good for some purposes, but not for trying to see as many straightforward tactical patterns as possible in a short period of time (and getting them right).  Not sure how ICC's works.

You seem like a very sensible person, so I'd like to suggest that there are some people you should simply ignore.  zborg is another. 

Just curious, what makes you say that?  Sure seems to be that he did make expert on tactics.

I agree with the first part.  I commented earlier on a game MDLM played and lost to a 1700-ish player, who developed a very good position in the game.  What it comes down to is that most --not all!-- club level games are decided by tactics, whether it is the case that one side sees or misses the tactic.

I disagree with the second part.  If you win the World Open, which is known as being sandbagger heaven, then you are likely legitimately much stronger than your rating at the end.  Many who win the World Open, regardless of rating category, usually add another hundred or two hundred points to their rating within the next couple of tournaments.  See Evgeny Shver, one of my favorite examples, in the USCF database.  (A friend of mine, a solid 2100-level expert said of him, "he was simply out of my league"...and the fellow went on to push his rating to something like 2380 in short order.)  I mean, the USCF calculator puts such a performance as his at about 2300-level, so I hardly think he would have dipped too much below 2000, if he continued to play.

Because that's not all he did.  It's just all he talked about.   You can't separate all of his previous training on openings, strategy and endgame and attribute his final rise to only tactics.  You can't separate the fact that he played 150 games in 18 months at a large chess club with dozens of masters to get tips from. The only way to do that empirically is take someone who doesn't know any chess and make them do 7 circles and see how far they go.

His tactical training was what allowed him to use all of his previous knowledge, which was worthless with poor tactical ability.

For the record, I'm not one to disparage tactical training.  I've said multiple times that it's the base of the food chess pyramid.  It should represent ~85-90% of an amateur's chess training.

You did all 7 circles in 2 months?

Hey hey hey. Who are you talking to?

You were agreeing with me yesterday.

Are you honestly calling him, the guy going against all established theory, all chess trainers and development programmes, the Soviet School of Chess and everyone who has ever had major success in the history of time and you're calling him sensible?

Get a grip. and think before you speak. That guy could be a cheater and should show his credentials if he's going to go around using them as some sort of proof of his opinions.  

I've seen plenty of people do the 7 circles and make huge improvement. The majority of the big improvements come from the U1200 crowd.  Wangtastic is the first I've seen start at 1700 and gain 400 points.  The vast majority of people I've seen start from there, gained 100 points at best.  No one seemed to be able to significantly improve past 1800.

ICC's set of problems is similar to CT-Art.  There's no rating involved but the choice of problems is, in my opinion, very good.

 I think you can set the rating of problems on here if you're willing to do them unrated - I think the setup here isn't so good for tactics as your rating goes up quickly and you end up doing ones that are too difficult (for pattern recognition purposes).  That being said, the choice of problems here overall is pretty good - most of them are clear and thematic.

I think it is time to ignore uhohspaghettioh1.

I agree with you up to a point, but he claims that "all that other prior study" only got him to about 1400.  At that point, he instituted his program.

Maybe age is a variable to take into account when trying to assess pattern recognition based training.

I did circles 2-7 in two months (as stated in my blog post, linked on the first page of this thread) pretty easily, so I am sure someone could pick up the pace and do all in two months.  It really doesn't take as much time as people think.  The last two circles are the roughest.

Clearly he is saying his bottleneck was tactics. The weakest link of an otherwise decent player. 

As I remarked to Ziryab, I think the program has varying results for people, but can generally move people below 1400 to 1800-2100, dependent upon intellectual ability.  Some people just learn faster.

As far as players already in the 1800+ range, I think players will have very, very different results.  Players who have gotten to 1800 with much more positional, opening, strategic, and endgame study may end up getting the full benefit of the program, whereas players who already have a strong tactical ability and need work in other areas of the game will unlikely gain much at all.