Rapid Chess Improvement (Everyman Chess) by Michael de la Maza
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Book Reviews of Rapid Chess Improvement (Everyman Chess)
Book Review: This book is ok, but not great...
Summary: 1 Stars
I skimmed a good portion of this book in a bookstore. Overall, the book isn't bad, but it has very little meat to it (in terms of chess). However, I do agree with author on many points such as the fact that most chess players cannot improve their play by using conventional methods. For example, most people don't have the time to study every single variation of Sicilian Defense or learn how to handle every kind of endgame. All of this, costs too much time and money and in the end is so boring that most people give up before reaching any kind of a significant milestone. I agree with the author that a new way of learning chess is needed.However, the author in my opinion, made a whole lot of weak arguments without much base to them. I'll list a few things here:
1. The author places way too much emphasise on ratings. At some points it sounds like the author cares more about ratings than anything else. In fact, I think the entire premise of the book that the author was able to raise his rating 700 points in two years (from 1300 to 2000) doesn't mean anything to me. So what?
Prove to me, that your playing strength, not your rating, has significantly increased. I don't want to implicate the author in anything, but com'n, he could have easily been a much stronger player at the beginning of his "experiment" than he attests to. His rating could have been inaccurate for many reasons. For one, he could have purposefully lowered it to 1300 so that he could write this book. Two: Maybe he didn't play in a single tournament for several years and his rating may have just stayed low at 1300 over that period but in reality, he could have been an 1800 or 1700 rated player.
Like I said, I don't want to say that author is lying, because I do not have any evidence for that, but what I am saying is that ratings really don't mean anything. Sometimes ratings could be artificially lowered. Every one heard of chess players that artificically lower their ratings over a long period, then go to some big tournament and play in a low division (e.g. U1400, when they're really about 1900 level) and win big cash prizes.
2. The author makes it sound like "Wow, you can raise your rating 700 points in only two years. Hop on and learn my method." But in the middle of the book the author says that on average he spent 2.5 hours a day, every single day including the weekends studying chess. To be exact, he says that he spent 2400 hours of studying + 600 hours of chess playing, which is 3000 hours over a period of 2 years. Do you really mean to tell me that an average person, especially an adult which this book is targeted to has that kind of time?? Let's do some math...
3000 hours = 75 workweeks = 18.75 "workmonths" = 1.5 work years.
In other words, what the author is suggesting is just about equivalent to getting a full-time job for the next 1.5 years of your life!!!
Common now. Can an average adult, who already has a full-time job, family, bills to pay, maybe even some classes that he/she is taking, take another full-time just to study chess? Give me a break, it isn't happening. The author is way off track here.
The other thing is. You know what? In my opinion, and believe me it's is not because I am jealous, the author really didn't do anything that extraordinary. Com'n. Anyone can significanly improve their rating and I am talking 500+ points, especially if your rating is low to begin with, if you're going to study chess full-time for next one and a half years. What's the big freaking deal?
The author should be commended on his ability to stay motivated over a period of 2 years and spending all these long hours studying and studying and studying. But, seriously, he didn't do anything out of the ordinary.
3. The previous poster is right. The book reads like an infomercial. Its chess value is just about 0. The books tries to sell itself to the reader by making the reader hopeful that it the book] holds the key to raising his/her playing strength significantly.
Book Review: Someone needs to say what this book is and isn't about
Summary: 1 Stars
I have been driven nuts by some of the reviews here and got so fired up that I finally had to write a review of my own. It seems that nobody here is willing to put their finger on what this book can and cannot do. My review isn't as much about whether or not you should get this book... It's more about what this book is and what it isn't.
First off, if you are seeking a greater understanding of chess, this is NOT the book for you.
What this book can do for you, as advertised, is to bump your rating up, and quickly in many cases. I know people who have studied this book and whose ratings increased greatly in a short period of time. I myself was tempted into the program, though I created my own tactics database of 1000 positions in my favorite chessplaying program rather than buy the recommended software.
Once I started going through my database, I began seeing the errors other players were making against me during games much more clearly and I was able to capitalize on those errors as a direct result of my studies. In addition, I was not hanging pieces as often anymore and I almost never hang a piece when I play nowadays. This is beneficial, of course, but therein lies the rub, and also the reason I stopped using this book.
The entire system of play the author advocates only works by capitalizing on other people's mistakes while minimizing blunders of your own. To be fair, the author is pretty up front about this system of play. However, there is no mention of creating a weakness in the opponent's army, no mention of how to build an attack, and no mention of how to put your pieces into positions that will favor you so that when the opporunity for a tactical shot comes, you can play it confidently. These are the things that chess is about!
The only thing you will be able to do better after a study of this book is to recognize tactical errors in your opponent's play and prevent tactical errors of your own. If you want to play strong chess, you must go beyond tactics and create opportunities to win games, not simply wait for the other player to make a tactical error!
Sharpening your tactics is an absolute necessity if you want to win games. There is no doubt about that. But I have become a much stronger player now that I have devoted what little study time I have to learning about the game, rather than going through a bunch of tactical drills repeatedly. You can certainly win your share of games by waiting for the other player to make an error - as the author (correctly) points out in his book - and your rating will most certainly go up. However, I must ask: since when is chess about accumulating rating points?
There is no way a player can reach the Master level by simply studying this book. Masters are not only extremely strong tactically, but in addition, Masters also understand many different elements of the game (there's more to it than just tactics!) and a study of this book will take you nowhere in that pursuit.
If you are content with a quick-fix "infomercial" approach (as several other reviewers have called it - lol), and you simply want your rating to go up, then this book has merit. But if you want to truly learn about chess, which most of us who play do, I must urge you to study something else.
Book Review: Do NOT waste your money
Summary: 1 Stars
This book is just an extended two-part article with nothing to make it worth the money. His claims are highly susupect, and he has yet to really prove his expert status. Check out the ratings of the author and the others in this book on the USCF rating page. He has not played a single rated game since he broke expert. Why? Has he withdrawn from tournaments to avoid rating hits, or just afraid to put it on the line in the expert/master range rather than the A level. Makes me think he is just an inflated A player who had a really good tournement against other A players. With his distain for opening theory I have serious doubts that he could handle himself where other people can spot tactics just as well as he can. In my experience the main difference between class A and experts is not tactical ability but knowledge of theory and position since most 1900 players are sufficently strong in tactics.The best example of rapid improvement sited in this book is still an active expert level player. Only problem: he didn't use this program, but that is not made clear. I would rather find out what this person did since he has ligitimate expert status.
A major problem here is that it reads like a political essay denouncing the status quo (ie. Silman and Kotov). Much of the text is just ego gratification via glowing reviews that if read carefully, and researched, are either suspect or superfluicious. I don't care if Joe Smith really believes this will work, I want to see him improve, but there is no proof that he has. Sorry, that just doesn't cut it for my money. He also spends much time taking cheap shots at respected GM and IM authors, and providing irrelavant and illogical analogies. In fact, he probably spends as much time ranting as he does explaining his methods. Actually, his methods are quite well known, and hardly worth two articles, let alone a whole book, to explain.
Also, even if his results hold true there are other ways to gain just as fast or faster if you put in the same herculian efforts. I have seen adults raise their ratings equally well and better by following other techniques that do not require bleeding from the eyes. One player I knew personally went from around 1750 to 2227 in less than a year and won the city championship, and he did this against real masters and experts. His method was the traditional method of analyzing games with annotations, trying to work out the variations as the annotator had.
In summary, get CT-Art 3.0 and do tons of tactical puzzles over and over till you can spot tactics fast, and work through forced combinations quickly. Play for shots at subexpert levels (and avoid the same against you) and you will be soon be a class A player. Just don't expect to be an expert, let alone a master like this.
Book Review: The worst nonsense ever...
Summary: 1 Stars
Let me warn you first: Don't buy this useless book!
The whole essence of the book is: Tactics is the most important thing in chess, so study tactics night and day ("hundreds and hundreds of hours in the next few month" according to the author). That's it.
As you now know the essence of his book, you no longer have to buy it.
Apart from the above mentioned statement de la Maza has no more skill or knowledge to write about chess. He has stolen all his critique on Silman and Kotov from other sources (the critique on Kotov is stolen from Silman's book "How to reassess your chess" by the way!) and his main point about the importance of tactics is stolen from Pandolfini. De la Maza has apparently read nearly all books by Silman, Pandolfini and Kotov as one can see by looking at the bibliography he gives in his book.
So I presume that de la Maza improved his chess not by his own advice, but simply by studying good chess books written by REAL experts on the matter.
Lets take a look at the book: de la Maza wants you to spend "hundreds of hours" on chess within the next few month doing dubious exercises....geee...but if you spend so much time on chess you will improve anyway...
De la Maza makes fun of his readers when he suggests that one should make cards that tell which color one specific square has....that is hilarious...what does that do for my chess understanding?......and the chess board is always in front of me during play, so I see the squares and their colors....so what the heck is learning the colors of all the squares about? De la Maza also has a sketch drawing of how these cards should look like....obviously he thinks his readers are complete idiots....
You may have a look inside this book at your local bookstore (but don't buy it!) and then you will notice that de la Maza just wants to make money but has no clue about chess teaching....
Maybe you take the "look inside" option here at amazon first; that already gives you a first impression on what the book is about.
THIS IS NO SERIOUS CHESS BOOK!!!
Book Review: You Have Got To Be Kidding...!?!?
Summary: 1 Stars
I'm afraid that if I were to properly follow the "study plan" as outlined in this book, I would end up absolutely hating the game of chess. In order to improve your rating by 400 points in 12 months, you will be asked to spend virtually every waking moment working on mind-numbing "chess drills". No, these "chess drills" that the book describes are not crafty "mate-in-2" problems, but exercises more suited for a 6 year old who is learning how the different pieces move. For example, one drill consists of nothing more than moving a single Knight to different squares on an empty board. If that wasn't bad enough, the writer says that if you do this drill properly, it will take 5 hours to complete?! Oh, and by the way, he also tells us that we need to practice this drill TWICE a day for two weeks! It's a shame to have to let petty things like a job, family, and sleep get in the way of completing this nifty little "drill". It's like reading a book on how to become a better second baseman, and having the writer tell you that you need to practice taking your glove on and off for 10 hours a day for 2 weeks...get real?! After reading midway through the book, when you realize that there is no possible way to complete the "study plan" (as there are only 24 hours in a day), the writer implies that it's OUR fault when he states "If YOU do not have the discipline to keep a schedule, then you will not be successful". As far as the rest of the book, the writer takes the time to criticize Mr. Jeremy Silman's teaching techniques (Reassess Your Chess Workbook), the study of positional chess is made fun of, and one whole chapter is devoted to people describing how the writers study techniques has improved their quality of life...ho-hum. Other than that, the writer preaches "tactics", but offers no practical advice on pins, forks, skewers, gaining material advantage, etc. If following this "program" is what it takes to improve 400 points in 12 months, then I'll just keep my job, family, and the love of the game and stay at my current rating for a little while longer.