Chess Books

[lblair]

@tmagchesspgh

I skimmed through the de La Maza book, Rapid Chess Improvement, for about 25 minutes in a bookstore. As I recall, he recommended … That book was not added to my library.

I am not really qualified to say, but I would guess that you made the right decision.

@tmagchesspgh

… The book was the sort of self-help book where you don’t have to work that hard, but if you follow author X’s secret method, you too can lose 10 lbs overnight! …

@GM John Nunn (2007)

… de la Maza claims that

Becoming an accomplished chessplayer should take approximately 2,400 hours

.

@tmagchesspgh

… It had pretty simplistic recommendations. It did not push for really detailed study. …

@Howard Goldowsky (2002)

de la Maza …with a current rating of 2041 … I sat down with Michael de la Maza in late October [2001], … he recommends focusing study on nothing but tactics. …

… Below 2000, if you get to an endgame, that’s because you missed a tactical opportunity before then. …

@tmagchesspgh

The fact of working diligently over an extended period all by itself would likely help a player to improve irrespective of any special methodology. I was skeptical that his particular method was best for everyone. …

Oddly enough, de la Maza himself made a somewhat similar point in connection with The Road to Chess Improvement by Alex Yermolinsky. theweekinchess.com/john-wats … chess-book

@IM John Watson (1999)

… In my years of reviewing, I have never been tempted to make a dramatic ‘book of the year’ pronouncement, but I can’t imagine anyone else topping [The Road to Chess Improvement by Alex Yermolinsky] in the near future. …
…
… Regarding the Modern Defence (1…g6), he is again skeptical of books and videos which promise Black an easy time, … The Grand Prix Attack is subject to 12 pages of harsh treatment, and linked with the Colle and Trompovsky as systems which are advertised to players as

‘secret’ openings that would allow them to handle the resulting positions with ease, operating with ‘ideas’ and ‘schemes’ instead of memorizing variations and calculating tactics.

At Yermolinsky’s Chess Academy in Cleveland, he says,

we do not practice a ‘quick fix approach’ that is popularized by many teaching GMs

, and students are urged to avoid

primitive set-ups designed to avoid theory.

He explains that when he began to teach,

Like many amateur teachers, I was tempted to cut down…by offering ‘simpler’ opening systems. But soon I realised that…to teach chess off the top of my head…is not reliable. In fact, it’s no more than an illusion, and practising it borders on plain old cheating.

That may sound harsh, but I wish that the many highly-paid chess teachers around the U.S. who put so little effort into their work would listen and respond accordingly.
…

@Michael de la Maza (2001)

… Yermo spends several pages denigrating simple set ups such as the Grand Prix Attack. He argues that a chess player must be willing to dedicate a substantial amount of time to studying a ‘real’ opening. With all due respect to Yermolinsky, this advice is off the mark. A class D player can become a class B player in one year without knowing the Sicilian or the Gruenfeld or the Ruy Lopez. …

I doubt that it is worth the price of Michael de la Maza’s book to get such statements, and, in any event, they don’t seem to me to take away from the true merits of the Alex Yermolinsky book. Nevertheless, I think the Michael de la Maza statement provided a loud reminder that good advice for one player may not be such good advice for another. I do not know whether or not it crossed the mind of de la Maza to apply that sort of thinking to his own advice, but, since those days, it seems to me that there has been greater attention to the issue of whether or not a specific piece of advice is necessarily beneficial for this or that specific player. For example: Subject: Greg on Building an Opening Repertoire

@GregShahade (2012)

… If you really want to be great at chess someday, or want to be above 2000-2200, you will greatly help yourself by playing main lines and serious openings. If you don’t have these ambitions, you can basically play whatever you want as long as you know something about it. …

By the way, in the tournament history for 12775875, I do not see anything after the 2001 event where the 2041 rating was achieved.

@Howard Goldowsky (2005)

… [De la Maza] … told me that … he has gotten good enough at Texas Hold’em to try it professionally.