Is Rapid Chess Improvement by Micheal De La Maza a good book?

What do you guys think? Is it worth the read?

No.

idk, the only thing I use to study chess is my own brain and the occasional look at traxler lines

It's a one page article expanded into book form for the sake of making money. Here, I'll save you the trouble by summing it up: "buy a tactics book and solve it from beginning to end 7 times."

Also the dude probably cheated with electronics.

Also no one replicated his supposed improvement by using his methods.

me cant nuy books no prob i got gotham and hanging pawns vids

Yeah i was not sure if it was to good to be true. I found it for free on scribd and was wondering if I should even take the time to read it

There are no tactics, and the book's advice is to go find a collection of puzzles and solve them all 7 times.

That's literally the whole book, so no, I wouldn't bother reading it even if it's free. And I wasn't kidding about him cheating either.

My two cents.

Yeah that sounds kinda lame. Where was he accused for cheating?

Some old article that gave some details like him working on an electrical engineering degree at MIT at the time (from my memory so I may get details wrong) then photos of him at the tournament showing everyone wearing shorts and t-shirts (it's summer time) while he was wearing a big coat...

So... yeah.

And after all that work and his rapid improvement, he wins that money, and immediately quits chess forever.

So... it really strains credulity.

All of it sounds pretty fishy ngl. I guess the book is a waste of time

The advice isn't bad... and as much as he pretends it's new, "solve a lot of tactics" is 100+ year old advice.

So you can follow it. Get a tactics book and solve the whole thing 7 times. That will probably make you a better player.

But don't bother with his trash book

Yeah solving tactic never hurt and I need to buy a tactics book

To someone who wants to improve and reach 2000ELO I think the book contains some good advice. Apart from the tactics advice the material about chess board vision may be more valuable than some realise. Interestingly the vision of the board aspect was something Em Lasker talked about in his manual.  Training "Vision" and "Sight of the Chess board geometry" is not mentioned so often in Chess books.  COULD IT BE ONE OF THE TRUE SECRETS OF FOUNDATIONAL CHESS SKILL 😋😀😛😋🐸.  I say read those parts of the book.

If you have time, it may be worth reading, but it's not worth buying "The Woodpecker Method" suggests a similar training program but includes the necessary exercises.

I've heard of it and want to buy it!

He took normal practice drills and turned them into a painful unrealistic process. 

Using the methods he described he reached over 2000 Elo. He admits it was a lot of hard work. He also covers a basic thinking system and how to study openings. After his last tournament he started that he proved his methods worked to reach his current level but to improve more he would need to study a lot more and he did not want to devote the time to do it.

Sorry, on this one, I have to agree just about 100% with @llama47.