Michael De La Maza
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Michael De La Maza began playing chess competitively in July 1999, and by July 2001 had improved such that his chess rating had risen from 1164, beginner level, to 2041, expert level. In his last tournament he won the Under 2000 section of the World Open and has not played a rated game since. After the tournament, he wrote a two part article entitled 400 points in 400 days for the Chess Cafe web site, which became the basis for the book Rapid Chess Improvement (ISBN 1-85744-269-5). The article and book are about his methods of improvement, which involves working through a large set of chess puzzles multiple times until they can be solved very quickly. This book and its lessons have generated much interest among improving chess players. An interwoven group of blogs that uses his method have dubbed themselves "the Knights Errant".
Nonetheless, there are some critics of De La Maza's training methods. For instance, his method involves focusing exclusively on tactics, with little attention paid to strategy, openings, or the endgame. Additionally, while the increase in rating experienced by De La Maza is atypical, it is not unique, especially among younger players.
