Rapid Chess Improvement (Everyman Chess) by Michael de la Maza
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Book Reviews of Rapid Chess Improvement (Everyman Chess)
Book Review: Good idea but a waste of $10
Summary: 2 Stars
DON'T SPEND MONEY ON THIS BOOK!The author's central idea is that the best way to improve at chess for beginners to intermediate players is to improve your tactical play through problem solving. That makes a lot of sense. I DO find almost all of my games are decided through simple tactical mistakes and this book provides a strategy to targeted to improve that critical element of my game. Fantastic!
PROBLEM
There is no content!! It does not actually give you the problems it tells you to solve! This book seems like a cheaply made cash-in on a good, freely available, essay.
CHEATED?
This book is built from the 2-part article "400 Points in 400 Days". You can read the original version free on the Internet. Basically, the author took the essay he wrote, padded it out, and re-packaged it as a book. The author gives you a lesson plan - solve 1000 tactics problems 7 times - but doesn't do the hard work of supplying the actual lessons! You have to put together the problems yourself.
Here is what you'll actually find in this book in addition to the original essay:
4 pages of drills meant to improve you chess vision. (Move the knight around the board, etc)
2 pages telling you to buy CT-ART 3.0 - chess software that specializes in tactics problems.
That's it! Really. The rest of the meager 70 or so pages are spent telling the author's personal story, showing graphs of how his rating improved, and telling you about his own incredibly rigorous training schedule. Inspirational but otherwise of little value.
INSTEAD
Read the original article, "400 Points in 400 Days", for free as motivation. Put together 1000 tactics problems (buy CT-ART 3.0 or equivalent books) and solve them repeatedly until they are second nature.
I give it two stars because I thought the central idea and the original essay, "400 Points in 400 Days" were very good. I just wish I hadn't paid for them.
Book Review: This book isn't for everybody
Summary: 2 Stars
The book explains how the author went from Class E to Expert in two years in a three-phase program. The first phase is a series of drills, such as putting the knight in the center of the board and finding the least number of moves to get to each square of the board, to be repeated over and over. Many people might feel a little dopey, not to mention bored, following through on this. And the drills are not really explained in detail, nor are any answers given. The second phase is to buy the software CT-ART (purchased separately) and go through its 1000 problems 7 times. The book suggests a particular schedule for doing this, with each pass twice as fast as the preceding. The third phase is some simplistic strategic guidelines (since the author's own experience was that he actually couldn't quite make it all the way to Expert just with tactical training). The book strikes me as more on the lines of a motivational, self-help kind of work; there's not much chess in it.Book Review: Read the articles on the web and save $$$
Summary: 2 Stars
I have nothing against the content of the book, except that it's just a slight expansion of the articles you can find on the web. The chess vision exercises are okay, but if you search for Dan Heisman's articles you'll find better. I wonder about a chess program that takes 1500 hours to jump to 2 grades. Perhaps a bit more insight and less drilling might cut this in half. If your looking for insight skip this book the author has none. So if you want the book in a nut shell practice simple chess positions lots and lots of times. His training method does work, I make fewer dumb mistakes against Fritz 8.0, but why pay for it.The author recomends CT_ART 3.0 instead of chess book problems. For my money Polgar's 5334 Problems is far better than program.
Book Review: A disappointment
Summary: 2 Stars
To be fair I must begin saying the "chess vision" exercises were helpful and interesting, but the book as a whole is more of an infomercial for other books and resources. Definitely not a good resource for one's chess library. You can get the same information from various online sources.
Book Review: An infomercial of smoke and mirrors
Summary: 1 Stars
Chesscafe.com has de la Maza's system available as a couple of articles. In a nutshell: Use CT-Art and do the same tactical exercises over and over and over again until you have gone through them seven times; Study only tactics; de la Maza takes on IM Jeremy Silman and is quite critical of his books.
I had my own rapid improvement period when I started to play chess again after a decade long hiatus. I went from 1876 USCF in January 1992 to 2200 USCF in March 1993 and received the national master title shortly thereafter. I fell back a bit in 1994 after suffering the results of a serious back injury but eventually I came back to return to my earlier form and achieve a Canadian master rating only to go away for another decade.
The books that I read and studied to improve were:
Think Like A Grandmaster: Algebraic Edition though I used the older descriptive notation edition.
Life & Games of Mikhail Tal
Botvinnik: 100 Selected Games
Chess Middlegame Planning by Romanovsky
Practical Chess Endings by Keres
My 60 Memorable Games by Fischer
Secrets of Grandmaster Play (Macmillan Chess Library) by Nunn
Chess for Tigers (Batsford Chess Book) by Webb
The Benko gambit (Contemporary chess openings) by Benko
How to Open a Chess Game by Portisch, Hort, Larsen, Petrosian, Evans and Botvinnik
Strategic Chess: Mastering the Closed Game by Mednis
Boris Spassky - Master of Tactics: Spassky's 100 Best Games 1949-72 (Batsford Art & Craft Books) by Cafferty
Encyclopedia of Chess Openings, A-1. R ....
Encyclopedia of Chess Openings Volume B
Encyclopedia of Chess Openings C
Encyclopedia of Chess Openings D
Encyclopedia of Chess Openings Volume E
Books that I would add to this list now:
Improve Your Chess Now by Tisdall
How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course(Exp. 3rd Edition) by Silman
Understanding Chess Move by Move by Nunn
Grandmaster Chess Move by Move: John Nunn Applies the Move by Move Approach to His Best Games
Secrets of Practical Chess (New Enlarged Edition) by Nunn
Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy by Watson
Chess Strategy in Action by Watson
Mastering the Chess Openings: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Modern Chess Openings, Volume 1 by Watson
Mastering the Chess Openings: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Modern Chess Openings, Volume 2 by Watson
Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games: Improve Your Chess by Studying the Greatest Games of All time, from Adolf Anderssen's 'Immortal' Game to Kramnik Versus Kasparov 2000 by Burgess, Nunn and Emms
Learn from the Legends: Chess Champions at Their Best by Marin
Chess for Zebras: Thinking Differently about Black and White by Rowson
The Seven Deadly Chess Sins by Rowson
Fire On Board: Shirov's Best Games
Fire on Board, part 2: 1997-2004
The Road to Chess Improvement by Yermolinsky
Perfect Your Chess by Volokitin and Grabinsky
Excelling at Chess (Everyman Chess) by Aagaard
Modern Chess Planning by Grivas
Modern Chess Series, Part 1: Revolution in the 70's (Modern Chess) by Kasparov
Silman's Complete Endgame Course: From Beginner To Master
Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual
Training for the Tournament Player by Dvoretsky
Opening Preparation (Batsford Chess Library) by Dvoretsky
Positional Play (Batsford Chess Library) by Dvoretsky
Nunn's Chess Openings (Everyman Chess Series)
Modern Chess Openings: MCO-14 (McKay Chess Library)
Pick as many of the books from this list as you will and you can't make a mistake. The Dvoretsky books might be a bit much to handle if you are below USCF 2000.
The key is to:
Find well annotated grandmaster games and study them.
Play a lot
Develop an opening repetoire
Study and analyse and annotate your own games and pay special attention to your losses.
Look at your games with stronger players.
Analyse interesting positions deeply preferably with stronger players.