| The English publisher Everyman Chess (www.everymanbooks.com) has recently published two books aimed at the student who wishes to improve their middlegame play. The first, Rapid Chess Improvement (2002, 126 pages, paperback, $16.95) by Michael de la Marza is a rather unusual and interesting work. Unlike most Everyman authors, de la Marza is not a FIDE titled player, but he has had an interesting, if brief career. In the space of two year he went from a USCF rating of 1321 to 2041, and he did it almost exclusively by studying tactics in conjunction with tournament play. Most chess players are familiar with Teichman's dictum that chess is 90 percent tactics, but few dedicate that percentage of study time to it. Mr. De la Marza contends that lower-rated players below Master should adopt his regimen if they would like to make rapid progress. He has very specific ideas of what is needed. The core of his program is what he refers to as "The Seven Circles", which consists of assembling 1000 tactical problems and going through them seven different times for maximum assimilation. The goal is to improve the student's tactical and calculating ability. The author advises that this program is best implemented by solving the positions on a computer and gives advice as to the best program to use (his preference is for CT-ART 3:0). What is one to make of this training program? Is it a fad diet or does it have a sound basis? I would say the latter but with a caveat. There is no question that tactics are an important part of chess, especially those below 2200. Traditional chess learning often tends to be passive in nature and de la Marza's program offers students an antidote to this by actively engaging them. Solving tactical problems will definitely improve one's tactical and calculating abilities. These are two areas that amateur players are often quite weak. That said I'm not so sure that such a one-sided program is the right way to achieve optimal results. My preference would be to spend only half the study time on tactics and the rest on playing over well-annotated master games (Logical Chess Move by Move would be one example) which offer plenty of explanatory prose and going over a good endgame book (Jerry Silman's book on the endgame for Chess Digest and James Howell's work for Batsford are two that come readily to mind) with a friend. Having said this I give high marks to Mr. de la Marza for his attempt to really craft a systematic training program much like one sees in other disciplines. If the reader gets nothing more from this book that urge to look more concretely at their study program Mr. de la Marza will have succeeded. Multiple Chess by Graeme Buckley (2002, 160 pages, paperback, $19.95) follows in the path of many "chess solitaire" or "test your chess" type books but with a twist. Here the reader is offered 22 games to play over and predict the moves for one side. In this there is nothing new, though the games that IM Buckley has chosen are primarily modern examples after 1990. What makes this book unique is that on each move the student is offered the choice of four different candidate moves. This feature can be avoided if the reader feels this is too much of a hint, but it can also be a benefit for the lower-rated player in two ways. Firstly, and quite obviously, the reader who is initially stumped has a chance to gain the right solution by being presented with a choice of four candidate moves. More importantly the student will improve their ability to select logical looking candidate moves by constantly being exposed to plausible possibilities, which can't help but improve their calculating ability. The author has done a good job of selecting and annotating the games for Multiple Chess. Players rated under 2200 can derive a great deal from this book. |