If that book/author is your role model youre doomed. I heard about the book and decided to throw away $7.00 for it. Let me save you from yourself. Save the $7.00 and just buy CT-art 3.0 as the author suggests. As for the other "exercises" in his book they arent worth the paper they are written on. And if you have read the reviews from people that have followed the book, how come they are from no one you ever heard of?
Surely one even somewhat famous master/grandmaster would have tried this?
Hi everyone,
I am looking to get together a group for a one year long chess endeavour where we study tactical middlegame positions as well as endgame positions together on a forum that we have created ourselves. In all it will amount to 10,000 problems, approximately 27/day. I know this sounds like a ridiculous amount but if you want to get good at any thing there is no short cut.
You might have heard of this concept before. Indeed, my role model for this project is Michael De La Maza's book "Rapid chess improvement" which you might have heard of. In it he prescribes learning 1000 tactical problems by heart by going through them altogether seven times (thus 7000 problems). From this he said to have gained 400 points in 400 days. If personally I could improve my chess by that much it would mean I would have reached above IM level. The point with the group would be to make it less tedious and to be able to discuss and reflect on each position we found difficult out of the 27 we are supposed to do each day. Verbally discussing can be a fun thing and it surely helps to improve memorization of certain themes, especially when it comes to the endgame positions. Since all 10,000 positions are in chessbase format this will make it easy for to copy the FEN and insert a diagram to the forum.
Again my goal is to have a group of a dozin or more people and no one rated below 1800. For anyone rated below 1800 they may find things too difficult but for 1800+ people the 27 problems aday should be a realistic task. I expect that one or two will drop out on the journey but those who make it I am sure they will have improved their game substantially. If you are interested please respond with your thoughts. Also, let me say that this is supposed to be a fun and easy going thing. Life is just a play. Problems arise when people start to take themselves seriously. I definately do not want this to be a one man project on my part. The idea is that we all contribute and then we share the common joy of success afterwards. In the end it is up to each one personally to chose how much time they want to devote to this. Personally I am not looking to devote more than 2 hours including solving+posting. From it I hope to at least have improved 200 rating points. That is my personal goal and I think it is realistic... what is your goal?
So let me know what you think.
Cheers,
greymattermatters