My point was that in your earlier posts you held Nunn and Silman to a much higher standard of evaluation than you held de la Maza. The mark of success for de la Maza's method was improvement, while the mark of failure for Nunn's and Silman's methods was continuing to drop pieces. The way you divided the issue, one could improve markedly by following Silman (say 300 rating points), but the programme would be considered a failure if that player continued to hang pieces now and then. On the other side, 300 rating points would mark the de la Maza programme as successful regardless of how many pieces the player dropped. Your reasoning was fallacious because you held the writers to different standards. That's what I meant by stacking the deck.

If de la Maza offers a superior training method, then it should lead to better results in most cases, and there would be no need to skew the language so that his method appears better.

You met my other objections (about evidence that people can study a la Silman and not improve), and although I don't agree with some of your conclusions (such as that the lack of adult improvement does not derive from lack of effort) I don't really want to argue at obscene lengths. I argue, however, that the existence of people who used Silman's method (faithfully) without improvement is not terribly significant because his books are so popular. To guage whether de la Maza in fact provides a better method it would be more useful to compare the percentage of players who train with each method and fail to improve.

RB, I wasn't trying to make you sound like you were calling de la Maza arrogant for having written a book. You say you don't think he's arrogant, and that experts can write good chess books. That's good enough for me.

I don't think you were engaging in thread hijacking. You don't have to withdraw any comments.

About infomercial culture: yes, there's a lot of that in this country. But American culture has room for sophistication as well as late night tv dreck. I may have posted this before, but check this out, you might get a laugh out of it:

PERFECTION FOR SALE

Your face was getting slack
With lines that blurred good bone,
But tight teen skin came back
With Super Dermal Tone.

Your teeth, once nearly green,
Diffuse a glossy white.
Since you've used Magic Clean,
You're blinding every night.

With cleavage by Bloussant,
You've conquered your worst fear.
As huge as you could want,
Your tits burst your brassiere.

With Fast Abs you've unwrapped
Your stomach's rippling glow,
With Jake's Bun Rocker zapped
The old buttissimo.

You're freed from every ounce--
So taut in so few weeks!
I almost yearn to bounce
A quarter off your cheeks.

And thanks to supplements
Too good for any store,
Which feature potent blends
Of vitamins galore,

Your bowels regulate
With movements smooth and lithe
A perfect bio-state
That causes you to thrive.

So thank your iron butt
And all that air inside
A vapid brain you glut
When you sit down to ride

The highway that has led--
Through gobs of boring ****
Which you are gladly fed--
To so much benefit!

You're whole in every way,
You've surged in your self-worth--
And all because you stay
Up every night and surf.

I support de la Maza as a chess author; I mean, I support his right to publish a book and to take his hits as well as his praise. If you read the introductory essay with which I began this thread, you'd realize that, while I think his study plan is worthwhile, I have quite a few reservations about it. I believe that study plans aren't the main reason for chess success. I think things like memory, steady nerves, and an attitude that combines aggression with discipline, are far more important than which particular study plan or training regimen is used. The guy who wrote Legends of the Fall said that the arts aren't a democracy; that a few succeed while the rest fail. I'm not sure to what extent, if any, chess is an art, but I totally agree and can only add that many who fail do so for reasons other than a lack of merit (Gray's Elegy, etc). Chess isn't fair; few things are!

As for me being old school where chess is concerned, yes, I am, probably regressively so. Although now I use books and computers for study, when I was younger, I learned the hard way, hit and miss. I could play before I could read (like 3 or 4 years of age--it's so far back, I don't remember when I learned!), and I taught myself by watching my father play with a friend. Of course, I didn't pick up everything from just watching. I had to pick up a chess book to learn about queenside castling, the en passant rule, and pawn promotion, because none of those came up in the games I watched. I started out by playing for money. It's a very tough way to learn--especially when you don't have much dough!--but over time I saw my stack of quarters and dollar bills get bigger. I played in cafes, restaurants, and bars, and that's where I learned how to concentrate like my 19th century chess heroes, who had to deal with noise levels that would drive the modern masters insane. I learned to get tactical ASAP because I lost fewer games that way, and because I could win faster and thereby pack in more games--which after a time almost always meant more money. I kept spending the money on stuff other than chess books, so all I had for study material was whatever the mostly small town librairies had in stock, mostly Reinfeld and Chernev, later on Golembek, Soltis and a few others. I just played over thousands of master games, and when I had one I liked, I'd play it over again and again. I have memorized lots of games. Not surprisingly, my first memorized game was Morphy vs the Duke and Count (probably the most famous chess game ever) and the first book I shelled out for was My Sixty Memorable Games. That was my bible for years. Later on, I got a subscription to Chess Life (eventually discontinued--New in Chess is way superior!), and I would play over all the games in each issue. I love the games method. Then I was a sophomore and I played on the winning state championship team (and tied for best first board score). That was my chess apprenticeship, and though it is certainly inferior to having a Botvinnik for a mentor or a Lazlo Polgar for a chess dad, still it worked for me. I read the de la Maza book because I devour chess books and Annika bought it and asked me to read it and tell her what I thought, and I do everything my lady asks!

You sound like you know a lot about weight-lifting. Curls are the show-off, mirror-muscle exercise. Squats are one of the best exercises you can do, and the only reason they're not done as much in the gyms like they should be is because they're really hard to do. The best way to know what is the best thing to do is to compile a list of what is hard, or--same thing--watch what most people do, and then go the opposite way. Or as Bukowski put it in one of his essays "once the public gets onto something it is dead and it changes. the public is not allowed to win in any game ever invented and that includes the American Revolution."

TGC, we're both laughing, so let's enjoy the comedy show, ok?

DeepNf3, you're not even a B-player (only 1261 for ICC standard, with 4 losses and no wins!) and you want to lecture any of us about the proper chess training method??? You have 25 games saved in your chess library and the game against LarryC is not one of them. You drew with a grandmaster, and you don't think it's worth saving??? Puh-leeeese!

By the way, for an openings guru, your response to the old Grand Prix attack is ancient. Try this on for size:

1 e4 c5 2 f4?! d5! 3 exd5 Nf6! 4 Bb5+ Bd7 (4...Nbd7 5 c4 a6 6 Ba4?! b5!) 5 Bxd7+ Qxd7 6 c4 e6 7 Qe2 Bd6 8 dxe6 Qxe6 9 Qxe6+ fxe6, with ...Nc6 and ...0-0-0 coming up, and Black has plenty for the pawn. That's courtesy of IM Sam Collins in his book Understanding the Chess Openings (Gambit, 2005).

DeepNf3, your other four languages must be better! Language ability has something to do with intelligence, so you're probably much smarter than I am--but you still have to stick to facts, you still have to make sense when you put forth arguments, and you had better get that rating up before you pick up the chalk and approach the blackboard again!

Sam Hardwick, II, that's an excellent post, very nicely done.

Fired, again, you nailed it!

SachBinger, good to see you in this thread. You don't post much, but when you do, it's always worth reading.

RB touched on the money thing, too. Maybe de la Maza went a bit overboard on that, I'm not sure. What I am sure of, is that money is god in America (probably everywhere else, too), and mentioning that you won ten grand in a prestigious tournament (ok, maybe only prestigious by American standards, but look who he's writing for!) can't hurt sales! Whether his training method is as efficient as he seems to believe could only be proven by some sort of scientific test, you know, double-blind and all that.

Your comments about pattern recognition and training efficiency are solid, as is the suggested hour of chess study and fun. There are many roads to the kingdom, but they all take effort! So it doesn't matter all that much what the training method is, as long as a player sticks to it for a long period of time and modifies it according to results.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration?"--Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction

How should I know where his games are? I'm not his mother.

" i made master level Fide rated 2100 when i was 22 years old, and YOU more likely than not will never get even close to that"

I guess 12 points counts is 'not even close' in DeepNf3 land, but oh well.

I've never played Larry Christiansen, so he has never 'beat my butt at piece odds'. I personally think simuls are pretty worthless since it's clear he's not full concentrating on your game. As I said earlier I'm not particularly interested in discussing how good I am, so I will not list any of the 'good' players I've beaten.

Fired, let's not forget the rating systems can be different, so close rating doesn't necessarily mean you are close in strength. Also, it is strange that you say In your very first message in this thread you wrote how you have beaten an FM and an IM. I, for one, would be interested to know more about those victories of yours

I only mentioned this in terms of progress: beating your first titled player is something of a landmark, I feel.

I can post the games if anyone wants them, they are a bit scrappy but pretty fun stuff.

Please do post the games. Regardless of what we may feel about de la Maza, I am sure people would enjoy playing through a game where a fellow amateur beat a big bad titled player

I can reciprocate by linking to a game versus Anand that I played (and lost) in a simul recently

Thanks but I've seen yours already, I really enjoyed playing through it.

This was my game against the IM from March this year. I am out of 'my book' after move 4, my knowledge of the Ruy is *far* from extensive! I think I still got a small edge out of the opening, but he managed to consolidate. I think without the Nd5 shot later I would have been positionally squashed, although I don't think it was entirely sound. I don't remember the exact variations as I don't have notes to the game on this computer.

Duke,M (2073) - Hanley,C (2435) [C76]
31st Conference Blackpool ENG (1), 16.03.2007

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 d6 5.0-0 Bd7 6.c3 g6 7.d4 Bg7 8.Bg5 f6 9.Be3 Nh6 10.dxe5 dxe5 11.Bc5 Bf8 12.Bxf8 Kxf8 13.Na3 Qe7 14.Qe2 b5 15.Bb3 Na5 16.Bc2 Kg7 17.b4 Nb7 18.Bb3 Rhd8 19.Rfd1 Nf7 20.Nc2 a5 21.a3 Nfd6 22.Nd2 c6 23.c4 Be6 24.c5 Ne8 25.Qe3 Nc7 26.Qc3 Rd7 27.Nf3 Rad8 28.Ne3 Bxb3 29.Qxb3 Ne6 30.Nd5 cxd5 31.c6 dxe4 32.Rxd7 Rxd7 33.cxd7 Qxd7 34.Rd1 Qc6 35.Qd5 Qxd5 36.Rxd5 axb4 37.Nd2 Kf8 38.axb4 Ke7 39.Rxb5 Nd6 40.Ra5 Nc7 41.Nb3 Ndb5 42.Nc5 f5 43.Na6 Kd6 44.Nxc7 Nxc7 45.Kf1 h5 46.Ke2 f4 47.Kd2 g5 48.b5 Nd5 49.Ra6+ Kd7 50.Rh6 e3+ 51.Ke1 h4 52.Rg6 h3 53.gxh3 f3 54.fxe3 e4 55.Rxg5 Nxe3 56.Re5 1-0

Afterthought: Looked through it again - I remember at the board I was expecting 33. exf3 but it turns out after the obvious 34. Rd1 things are uncomfortable for black.

I'll try and get the game against the FM soon (it's not on this computer).

Found it, it was still posted on the website.

These are two of my favourite games not just because of the strength of player but because both were played on a stage and were broadcast live online. I almost felt like a real chess player!

I was lucky enough to have been shown the Bg5 Najdorf by an FM at my club a couple months previously, so I had a rough idea what I was doing. I wasn't entirely sure what to do after 7...Nbd7 (Be7 is normal) so I had to more or less wing it from there.

Duke,M - Britton,R
Blackpool Chess Conference (2), 11.03.2006

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Nbd7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.0-0-0 b5 10.Bd3 Bb7 11.Rhe1 Qb6 12.Nb3 0-0-0 13.Bh4 b4 14.Bf2 Qc7 15.Nb1 Be7 16.Qe2 a5 17.Ba6 Nc5 18.Bxb7+ Nxb7 19.Qa6 Nd7 20.N1d2 d5 21.exd5 Nb8 22.Qa7 Rxd5 23.Re4 Nc6 24.Qa8+ Qb8 25.Qa6 Kd7 26.Nc4 Bd8 27.Nb6+ Bxb6 28.Qxb6 Rc8 29.f5 Rxd1+ 30.Kxd1 e5 31.Qb5 f6 32.Re2 Nd6 33.Qd5 Ke8 34.Bc5 Nxf5 35.Qg8+ Kd7 36.Qf7+ 1-0

Combo_kid do you want to go to ICC right now so i can prove to you that the LarryC game is mine?
just tell me what your handle is and i will send you a tell from the account i played the game with and show it to you in my library

chances are that just like Fired you don't have a single account at the chess club where all the best play

how do i know that Fired don't have one? because he could not even pull up the original PGN file of the game he showed about me from WCL either

and Fired i am still waiting for you to tell me something about de la maza's games

and please don't even try to talk to me from some acount that don't have any or just a few of your games.........if that's what you are going to do, don't even bother

I have DVD collections and books, chess Assistant 9, Book up 2000, chessbase,Fritz10 and databases related to all those etc etc........plus accountsssss at the most important chess servers......what do you have? or are even trying to get?

DeepNf3 sounds like he knows his chess, so I take his word for it. No proof is necessary, as far as I am concerned.