Where are the voices of highly rated people?

What's annoying though is his book can be summed up into 1 page. The rest is just cheer leading. He gives no tactics in the book, and doesn't even provide suggestions for other tactic collections out there.

Also annoying is that he sells it like some genius insight when any coach (or experienced player) in the last 100 years would tell you the same thing i.e. tactics are very important, and one of the best ways to improve when you're new.

Yeah, and usually the questions themselves are malformed. I.e. "what's the best aggressive opening?" But they don't even know what they're asking. So sometimes someone who gives an answer totally unrelated to the question happens to answer what the OP had been attempting to ask in the first place.

Like "I like to attack with knights because they're tricky" and the OP, who was asking for an opening, says "thank you so much, I saw openings with early bishop moves, but I didn't understand, now I will move my knights instead!"

heh.

In general, people with OTB ratings of 1200 or higher have been considered for generations to have a strong basic knowledge of chess.  I was a club-level player who coached a high school team in my state's most competitive county to three straight county championships and three State Scholastic Championships team trophies.

I don't care what someone's rating is, they often have an insight into some aspect of chess that's worth listening to.

I think it is easily possible to have better understanding of chess than your rating shows, sometimes by a large margin.  It's also possible for the opposite, to have a much higher rating than your overall understanding.

Your rating can be seen as a kind of aggregate number, made up of several different smaller ratings, if you will.  In my case, my online rating is about 2000, but I play the middlegame, especially quiet middlegames, very well, likely over 2000 rating.  My endgames, though, are lacking.  My tactics are decent but nothing special.  If you watch me play a solid middlegame, you might think I'm closer to 2200; if you see me flail about in the endgame, you might conclude I'm 1800.  When you add all these 'little ratings' up, so to speak, you get your final rating.

This is true for everyone.  Many people have a decent, above average understanding of chess, but they can't apply it practically: they fall apart under pressure, or they miss tactics, or they don't handle the clock well.  They might not be strong players, but they still understand chess, and they can be very useful teachers, mentors and guides.  The same is true in reverse.

In the final analysis, use the rating as a rough guide, but it can't guarantee anything written on these forums.  If you see a titled player, though, such as Pfren or Poucin who post fairly regularly, you should definitely give them extra weight.

My 2 cents on rating vs. chess understanding.

First, "rating" does not mean online rating, and especially not, for the love of all that is decent, online blitz/bullet rating. Having the best internet connection and being able to move the mouse quickly have nothing to do with understanding or the ability to teach chess. I don't know about online daily chess rating. You would think it's related to chess skill, but in my daily games I've played on here I've gotten progressively confused. You have 1300s and 1400s playing at master strength and 2000s making blunders. So I have no idea what online daily rating means.

The meaningful rating is the real OTB FIDE / national federation rating. It at least reflect chess skill over a long period of time.

Second, online forum advice is questionable in general. Besides all the useless or actively harmful advice and the trolling, it's hard to give a quick, generalized answer that will be useful. Like, what do people expect when asking e.g. "What opening should I play?" How the **** should I know? If I coach you, look at your games with you, find your specific strengths and weaknesses, then I could tell you. But that will take time. And your money. Or one of my favorites, "should I study tactics, openings, or endgames?" The answer is YES. And you knew that before asking. Beyond that, again, it has to be involved and personalized. So even those who have a good understanding of chess may not give insightful answers. The forum format is not at all conducive to useful discussion.

Despite its limitations and irritations, I have been able to glean some nuggets of insight and wisdom from forum discussions from time to time.  Not to mention making virtual friends.   I wouldn't shun this part of the chess ecosystem despite it being a jungle at times.

Talking about the higher rateds of course!

De la Maza's basic advice, to work on tactics and pattern recognition, is good advice. The mistake he makes is to act as if that's all that's needed to improve, and to advertise his book on almost every page. It's the worst kind of self-help book in that it has a grain of truth covered in self-congratulatory advertising while glossing over the rest of the story. 

Again, De la Maza's basic advice is not revolutionary nor is it bad. But in order to improve, one must do far more than just what is in the book. De la Maza himself spent a great deal of time and energy on other facets of the game than just tactics.

Hi, how's it going?

How would you know? Are you a 2000 uscf player? It is difficult to become an expert and you have to have talent and knowledge.

Everyone want to be an expert but they that lack the talent.  He speak like he is very knowledgeable but why is his otb rating not 2000 elo?

An 1800+ here, at your service. What would you like to know?

I am also here to help

Its obvious I am in your side.

De La Maza try everything to improve but he saw little improvement. Every strong player advice him study tactics  and he took it to heart and did it; he finally had the results he was looking, winning more games and increasing his rating. So he is telling the truth and it will work for anyone who is DILIGENT; the problem is most players are lazy and don't have the perseverance to get better and quit. Of course De LaMaza's tactics only have limitation as you go up in rating you playing stronger players and they quite competent in tactics plus other skills but against low rated amateur its excellent advice to work on your tactics.

What's low rated?  Anyone below you?  What's low rated to a 2300?  It's all a matter of perspective.  If you think someone at my rating is too low to give advice to a 800-1000 beginner then that is your belief to have on your own and you shouldn't profess to all those that are below 2000 not to give advice to lowly rated individuals.  If you want to believe this then by all means believe that I am too low rated to give advice, but don't try and give out this dogma that all people below 1800 are "low rated" and thus need not give advice.  Fact of the matter is I know I climbed through a big slump.  I constantly beat people that are below 1000 and try and give them the best advice I can give, and my 1800-1900 friend always agrees with me .  What I am talking about is I know I climbed thorough a slump is that when I started playing online chess my win to loss record was something like 70 percent loss and 30 percent win I shit you not, and I was playing people around 1000-1100 rating at the time on yahoo chess, which I'm told is a breeding ground for engines btw...  Don't know how big engine cheating was back then, but I'm sure it existed.  Anyway, due to knowledge base gains over the years I havn't gained much rating because I don't play enough long games.  My problems, the reason why I am not getting better, is because I don't play enough, and, I have time management issues.  Given 3 to 6 months of consistent play I think I can gain a huge chunk of rating, because, though I don't have the chops, I have the knowledge base, because I have been playing with people a lot higher rated than I for a very long time and learned a lot about basic chess principles by just playing them.  It's just my time issues that can be fixed just by playing games with longer time controls.  My rating my seem low, but with a few tweeks, I can probably gain 200-300 points, in my belief.  I could be wrong...

Also, why are only people with 1800 high rated to you?  Why not 2300?  Why not 2500?  It's all a matter of perspective.  Just because you are not 1800, in my opinion, does not necessarily mean one cannot dispense some knowledge to lower rated individuals.  How do I know this?  I constantly do this when I play over the board at starbucks with an 1800-1900 individual who is sitting there agreeing with what I am saying.  One doesn't have to be 1800 to be a good coach.  It's all in your head.  It's all presteige.  a Beginner doesn't have to pay 75 bucks for a GM to teach him.  He just needs to pay 10 bucks to a 1500 rated player, or if possible, for free.  Sure some people who are masters will charge 10 bucks but you have to take into consideration this is a market and there is competing, of course, a 1500 charging 10 bucks might not have as many students as a CM rated 2000, but, there may be other areas of expertise this person might have that might cause him to gain a student following nonetheless.  Plus part of marketing and being an independent chess consultant and selling yourself is about building a client base, in however way you can, while also worrying about student attrition.  It's certainly possible, to see a 1500 rated person as a coach, but at the coach level I believe it may need to be a bit more than that, that is just my opinion of course.  But these are just casual chess forums.  Who are you to tell others that they cannot give advice when they know the answer just because they do not meet your artificial standards?