Quote:De la Maza isnt BS. Its a great way to increase your tactical ability which a very important factor towards making you a stronger player. What is there that is bad about that?
What does de la Maza say? Tactical drill with 7 circles with CT Art and Knight’s tour, am I right? Before I proceed I have to say his knight’s tour has some merit. Even here Jon Levitt’s knight tour is much more refined.
What does he say it will deliver? 400 points in one year. And what are those 400 points? 2000 to 2400, 2200 to 2600 or 2400 to 2800? None. Some one must be raving mad to claim that. I used a more refined term and called it BS.
If it is from 1000 to 1400 or 1200 to 1600, the method will definitely get you there. But coaches who have worked with bright kids will testify that they seem to gain this kind of strength over the weekend and without de la Maza. Well tactics are very important. But what I fail to understand is what a 1100 will do with 9th level difficulty of CT Art.
Any concerted effort, be it going over classics (very important, imho) tactics (perhaps 30 mins a day) and end game studies over that period of time de la Maza suggests, will make one a better player than the one who follows his recommendation verbatim.
Finally, adult beginners resort to chess to break monotony. Is de la Maza the way to do it? Give me a break.
So, basically de la maza suggests a system of improvement that is useless when it matters and delivers eminently when so many other approaches can also deliver. The bottom line is de la Maza is not needed to take one from 1000 to 1400 and de la Maza cannot take one from 2000 to 2400. What more, he has a cult following. One of the definite candidates to be termed BS.