Answers.Body: <p>Alekhine died in 1946. I have a copy of Fred Reinfeld's "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations" in 1955, 9 years after his death, which is basically a tactics training book. Reinfeld was the first dedicated chess author, as far as I know, who churned out chess books on an industrial scale. It could be that he was the first person to come up with the idea of extracting tactical motifs from games and putting a large number of them in a book and selling it.</p>
  
  <p>Before Reinfeld there was the idea of games collections of short games which would contain tactical ideas, just not in such a concentrated form. I have a book called "200 Miniature Games of Chess" by J. du Mont which was published in 1941, within Alekhine's lifetime.</p>
  
  <p>I suspect that players of Alekhine's generation and earlier honed their tactics by playing through short, tactical games, possibly from games collections like this.</p>
  
  <p>Note that tactical motifs, like pins, discovered check, the importance and use of the 7th and 8th ranks and others, were identified and discussed by Nimzowitsch in his book "My System" published in 1929. These ideas were not new. What was new at the time was classifying and describing them as Nimzowitsch did.</p>
  
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Answers.UserDisplayName: Brian Towers
Answers.Body: <p>Tournaments and matches.  Possibly also self play/analysis.</p>
  
  <p>Books were very rare and not very good back then.  </p>
  
  <p>Just playing more is no use unless you  play better too.</p>
  
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Answers.Text: I had said more better which has been edited.  Alekhine already played better.  I still think that more better is better English meaningwise. Better is not enough, best is not feasible for all the top players , so more better fills the gap better:)
Answers.UserDisplayName: chessie
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Answers.Text: If you feel like the edit changed the meaning, you're allowed to change it back, although think twice if it's bad grammar.
Answers.UserDisplayName: D M
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Answers.Text: "More better" doesn't sound grammatical to me. You don't usually combine "more" and another comparative in this way; see [this question on ELL SE](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/47284/is-more-better-ungrammatical). How about "even better?"
Answers.UserDisplayName: Bladewood
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Answers.Text: then how do  you say something that is   gooder than better when it is not the best.  english is a deficient language although very efficient.
Answers.UserDisplayName: chessie
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Answers.UserDisplayName: chessie
Answers.Body: <p>In Joosep Grents's wonderful <a href="https://chess24.com/en/read/news/paul-keres-prince-without-a-crown" rel="noreferrer">biography</a> on Paul Keres, there is a brief first-hand account of tactics training in that time period. For background, Paul was a contemporary of Alekhine and almost played him for the World Champion title, but the match never materialized.</p>
  <p>Here's what Paul Keres had to say about training tactics in the 1930s (emphasis mine):</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>I used correspondence games, above all, for experimental purposes,
  often opting for very risky opening lines and attempting, at all cost,
  to create complicated positions which <strong>I could use to train my tactical</strong>
  <strong>skills</strong>... It is easy to notice a bias toward tactics in these games,
  while there are still considerable problems apparent in solving
  strictly technical problems.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>The article notes that at one time Paul was playing more than 100 correspondence games at once.</p>
  
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Answers.UserDisplayName: tmastny
Body: <p>How did classic masters like Alekhine and Anderssen practice tactics? Surely there was no chess.com or chesstempo at that time. How did the masters back then manage to increase their tactical awareness?</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-06-08T16:43:58.170Z
Comments.Text: There used to be books in the old days....
Comments.UserDisplayName: user1583209
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-06-08T17:16:43.720Z
Comments.Text: You ought to realize that chess.com and the like merely encapsulate what those old masters *invented*. Chess knowledge, like other knowledge, is slowly built out of the experience and intuition of people with outstanding talent. We lift ourselves by our bootstraps, and nobody knows how that works,
Comments.UserDisplayName: Philip Roe
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-06-08T17:30:37.873Z
Comments.Text: @user1583209 I believe the questions has more to it. Right now general philosophy on improving tactics is something like this: "solve thematic puzzles that take 15 seconds to a minute to solve", but was it always the case? I wouldn't be too surprised if, say, in Anderssen times people thought that the best way to improve tactics is just to play more.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Akavall
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-06-08T17:56:21.990Z
Comments.Text: This might be true just out of necessity, when the master had exhausted the available printed material.
Comments.UserDisplayName: user1583209
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-10-06T23:57:28.443Z
Comments.Text: Who is "Anderson"? Do you mean the 19th century German master Adolf **Anderssen**?
Comments.UserDisplayName: bof
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-10-07T11:42:50.240Z
Comments.Text: Yes i forgot to type his full name
Comments.UserDisplayName: bretlee
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-10-07T12:18:39.570Z
Comments.Text: @Akavall I don't think 1-minute problems are the best way to improve tactics
Comments.UserDisplayName: David
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-10-07T18:07:52.837Z
Comments.Text: @David, but that's a very common advice, for example answer to this question: https://chess.stackexchange.com/a/26858/307 (OK, it is "no more than two minutes").
Comments.UserDisplayName: Akavall
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-10-11T21:55:50.400Z
Comments.Text: @bretlee What confused my was not that you didn't type his full name but that you called him Anderson instead of Anderssen. You do mean Anderssen, then?
Comments.UserDisplayName: bof
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2020-10-12T08:30:42.520Z
Comments.Text: Yeah,I did meant to write anderssen but maybe the system autocorrected and it made that mistake
Comments.UserDisplayName: bretlee
Tags: <tactics><history><alekhine>
Title: How did classic masters like Alekhine and Anderssen practice tactics?
ThreadText: # How did classic masters like Alekhine and Anderssen practice tactics?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2020-06-08)
  
  How did classic masters like Alekhine and Anderssen practice tactics? Surely there was no chess.com or chesstempo at that time. How did the masters back then manage to increase their tactical awareness?
  
  **Tags:** tactics, history, alekhine
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: There used to be books in the old days....  
  > **username_2**: You ought to realize that chess.com and the like merely encapsulate what those old masters *invented*. Chess knowledge, like other knowledge, is slowly built out of the experience and intuition of people with outstanding talent. We lift ourselves by our bootstraps, and nobody knows how that works,  
  > **username_3**: @username_1 I believe the questions has more to it. Right now general philosophy on improving tactics is something like this: "solve thematic puzzles that take 15 seconds to a minute to solve", but was it always the case? I wouldn't be too surprised if, say, in Anderssen times people thought that the best way to improve tactics is just to play more.  
  > **username_1**: This might be true just out of necessity, when the master had exhausted the available printed material.  
  > **username_4**: Who is "Anderson"? Do you mean the 19th century German master Adolf **Anderssen**?  
  > **username_0**: Yes i forgot to type his full name  
  > **username_5**: @username_3 I don't think 1-minute problems are the best way to improve tactics  
  > **username_3**: @username_5, but that's a very common advice, for example answer to this question: https://chess.stackexchange.com/a/26858/307 (OK, it is "no more than two minutes").  
  > **username_4**: @username_0 What confused my was not that you didn't type his full name but that you called him Anderson instead of Anderssen. You do mean Anderssen, then?  
  > **username_0**: Yeah,I did meant to write anderssen but maybe the system autocorrected and it made that mistake  
  
  ---
  
  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_10 on 2020-10-06. Score: 10 | Accepted answer
  
  In Joosep Grents's wonderful [biography](https://chess24.com/en/read/news/paul-keres-prince-without-a-crown) on Paul Keres, there is a brief first-hand account of tactics training in that time period. For background, Paul was a contemporary of Alekhine and almost played him for the World Champion title, but the match never materialized.
  
  Here's what Paul Keres had to say about training tactics in the 1930s (emphasis mine):
  
  > I used correspondence games, above all, for experimental purposes,
  > often opting for very risky opening lines and attempting, at all cost,
  > to create complicated positions which **I could use to train my tactical**
  > **skills**... It is easy to notice a bias toward tactics in these games,
  > while there are still considerable problems apparent in solving
  > strictly technical problems.
  
  The article notes that at one time Paul was playing more than 100 correspondence games at once.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_6 on 2020-06-08. Score: 8
  
  Alekhine died in 1946. I have a copy of Fred Reinfeld's "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations" in 1955, 9 years after his death, which is basically a tactics training book. Reinfeld was the first dedicated chess author, as far as I know, who churned out chess books on an industrial scale. It could be that he was the first person to come up with the idea of extracting tactical motifs from games and putting a large number of them in a book and selling it.
  
  Before Reinfeld there was the idea of games collections of short games which would contain tactical ideas, just not in such a concentrated form. I have a book called "200 Miniature Games of Chess" by J. du Mont which was published in 1941, within Alekhine's lifetime.
  
  I suspect that players of Alekhine's generation and earlier honed their tactics by playing through short, tactical games, possibly from games collections like this.
  
  Note that tactical motifs, like pins, discovered check, the importance and use of the 7th and 8th ranks and others, were identified and discussed by Nimzowitsch in his book "My System" published in 1929. These ideas were not new. What was new at the time was classifying and describing them as Nimzowitsch did.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_7 on 2020-06-08. Score: 5
  
  Tournaments and matches. Possibly also self play/analysis.
  
  Books were very rare and not very good back then.
  
  Just playing more is no use unless you play better too.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_7**: I had said more better which has been edited.  Alekhine already played better.  I still think that more better is better English meaningwise. Better is not enough, best is not feasible for all the top players , so more better fills the gap better:)  
  > **username_8**: If you feel like the edit changed the meaning, you're allowed to change it back, although think twice if it's bad grammar.  
  > **username_9**: "More better" doesn't sound grammatical to me. You don't usually combine "more" and another comparative in this way; see [this question on ELL SE](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/47284/is-more-better-ungrammatical). How about "even better?"  
  > **username_7**: then how do  you say something that is   gooder than better when it is not the best.  english is a deficient language although very efficient.  
  
  ---
  
  