The "Circles" drill

I found a chesscafe article about the "Circle" tactical training drill. It involves having a list of 1000 problems sorted by difficulty, then solving them in 128 days. 64 days, 32 days, etc... I was wondering where I would find a list like that. If anyone has done the drill or knows where such a list is, please tell me! Thanks in advance!

Please help!

You will find more than you have time to read at the blogs listed at http://knightserrantfaq.blogspot.com/.

M. de la Maza's training notions are controversial. He quit chess, and there is abundant evidence that his methods produce burn-out. He also overstates the case for tactics, eschewing not only positional understanding, but unfairly criticizing those who write books that help with positional concepts.

Nonetheless, many have followed his prescriptions in full or in part. In the early days of chess blogging, a group of like-minded bloggers documented their efforts to implement de la Maza's training regime. The link provided above will give you entry to this world. 

IMHO nothing beats the tactics trainer, either the one here or one of the other sites. This should be combined with positional training as well. The idea of positional chess is to get the pieces onto the right squares so that they can then leap out in all of their tactical glory. Also going over your games with a chess engine helps to pinpoint your own deficencies. This is not the Circle Program but it works. 

tactics trainer is awesome I do it everyday.  However I have been encouraged by numerous stronger players than myself to study tactics by choosing one particular tactic at a time and solving many puzzles with just that particular pattern.  This method will hopefully ingrain the patterns into your head rather than solving random puzzles like TT gives.  Most tactics books arrange puzzles in this manner.  Polgar's Winning Chess Tactics is a great book to use.

When I was young I got Reinfeld's 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate and 1001 Combinations--forgot exact titles. I believe both books are available free on the internet. 

If you do tactics problems by theme, you know in advance what the tactic is going to be, so doesn't that take away most of the challenge?

tactics are important but de la Maza promotes the equivalent of practicing scales in music to the complete exclusion of anything else.  Or I dunno something like that.. 

The point of doing it this way is not so much the challenge( as strange as it sounds).  The point is to improve your pattern recognition.  You want to do the tactics over and over so you almost instantly recognize it.

Thanks, the link does help! I think I'm going to pick up a copy of CT-ART soon.

ct-art is awesome content.  The interface is complete trash though, so make sure to overlook the shortcomings there.

If I wanted to select 1000 problems, I would use the first 1000 in the Anthology of Chess Combinations. The Chess Informant Solver's Kit that is included on the CD cersion is simple, useful software for solving on a computer screen.

See http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2012/12/anthology-of-chess-combinations.html 

That software also looks pretty interesting. I have heard people saying that the Peshka interface is not the best, so I will have to look into that.