Reading 1001 Brilliant Chess Sacrifices and Combinations, by Fred Reinfeld is the best way to improve your game.  It is my substitute for " Tactics Trainer ". 

   He also wrote a companion book 1001 Ways To Checkmate.

   Another view of this is to imagine 2002 chess diagrams all about destroying your opponents.

   Using these books, I have no need for any other tactics training (some of which has been borrowed from the first Reinfeld book).  If you run across one of these books, pick it up.  It seems it may be possible to download the first book online, I have been told.  My problem is I am often too lazy, or not in the mood to pick them up and read them.  If I don't I will cease to progress.  As Mike Ditka (an American Football coach) once remarked, "Winning takes more effort than just wanting to win".  To paraphrase Shakespeare, " If wishes were horses beggars could ride."   We also must do the work, inspired or not.  That is why tactics trainer is also good.  It is a modular, and more systematic method of working on tactics.

   After that I go to Chessgames.com and study the games of Tal, Alekhine, Bagirov, Sokolsky, Bird, Marshall, Diemer, Kasparov and Tartakover to copy their styles.  Particularly Diemer, Alekhine and Bagirov in order to learn more about the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, the Nimzo-Indian (as played by Alekhine) the Nimzo-Larsen Attack and Alekhine's Defense (as played by Bagirov).  I play through Kasparov's games with the Sicilian Scheveningen and also look at Tal's games with White against the Sicilian Defense.  Frank Marshall's games with Black in the Queen Pawn Openings are very valuable these days.  These are defenses where 2.c4  (the Queen's Gambit) is not played by White.  The Colle goes back at least 100 years, so why not ways to combat it as well?  Marshall had some answers.  If you think Frank Marshall was not a good player look at the game Livitsky - Marshall (Poland, 1912).  It is somewhere on Chess Showcase, one of the " Immortal Classics " of the game.  If you want to learn the Petrov (or Russian Defense), then Marshall is your man.  Throughout your life you will hear "study the games of the masters."  The games of the masters past and present!  Bobby Fischer is now one of those who has passed into chess history.  If you like to play the Sicilian Najdorf and King's Indian Defense, Fischer is your man.

   All that is missing now would be a study of the endgames, in which Irving Chernev's book Practical Chess Endings is my guide.  Very practical indeed.  Also found on the web to download.  For all those who would rather learn at the computer or have no source for chess books just remember, (even if you are running Fritz, Rybka or chess databases) openings do not win chess games - people do.  Otherwise what would be the point of tactics studies?  Databases help you to bypass almost all chess traps, (many of which, using databases, you are not even aware of) since databases do not suggest losing moves.  So, do not get hung up on openings.  Openings do not win chess games.  If databases help you decide moves that is fine, but grandmaster games take you a step beyond that.  They teach you, over time, how best to develop a chess style and to choose your own moves.   

Good Info!

Aren't they all in descriptive notation?

stwils

I will look for it thx

A link to reinfelds puzzles (legal, since they are printed without the solutions)

http://www.chessville.com/downloads/downloads_tactical_exercises.htm

    If Fischer could follow chess annotations in Russian, I suppose a few of us can deal with English (descriptive) Chess notation until some publisher reprints them in algebraic notation.  If Bobby learned Russian because he desired so strongly to win at chess, to see what new opening variations the Soviets were discovering, then it seems we all can muddle through with this.  If we desperately want to improve the level of our play, then no holds are barred.  Conversation is a game of political correctness, not chess.  You do what you have to do to win.  I have not heard of anyone (except Jose Raul Capablanca) say chess is easy.  He grasped all of these concepts without apparent effort.    

    Anyway, the diagrams speak for themselves, we don't need too use much notation.  There are sections on the "pin", the "knight fork," "the double attack", etc.  That makes the positions easier to figure out.  Each chapter is a different theme.  That's the point of the book.  These are not really books of puzzles at all, but a teaching method.  It is a book of attacking themes in which the diagrams are evidence that said different themes are reoccuring and can be identified within the mosaic of the chess board.

   MikedaSnipe

tells us that notation is not important at the thread he posted, as the answers are not given.  Nevertheless, half the checkmates and winning attacks can be figured out without setting up a board.  Some are easy to see, and only 2/5 or 1/3 are difficult, where we would need the help of a board or the answers.  Sometimes it takes a little effort, but these are the views we would have in over the board games.  So we would have to see the win coming in exactly the same way (without looking up the answer).  This is what we are training to do in learning additional tactical skills.  To see the moves for ourselves on screen or OTB.

   For future reference, 50 years after an author's dead his books are in the public domain, and can be reprinted without paying royalties to the author's family or estate. 

    Fred Reinfeld published this book in 1955.  50 years later it is still being published.  That has to tell us something right there.  Other chess authors have written books incorporating some of the knowledge imparted to us by Mr. Reinfeld, by virtue of the fact that they had  earlier read his book.  I believe he co-authored Logical Chess Move By Move with Irving Chernev. In it he even recycles some of these ideas himself.

   A boxer needs to know he can counter a left hook with a left hook of his own.  He needs to know that if he can work one foot in between his opponents two feet, a knockdown punch is then a good possibility.  Chess also has its tecniques like doubling your rooks on the seventh rank, smothered mate and "removing the guard".  What Reinfeld re-emphasizes and others write about are the systematic uses of these techniques when they are spotted and become available in a game.  These are thematic moves.  That is what Reinfeld taught and retaught.  That is what Nimzovitch taught - pin the enemy knights, put your rooks on open files, blocade the enemy pawns with your knights.  We are not discussing fashionable books here.  We are discussing the secondary rules of chess.  The rules of the game are about how the pieces move.  The techniques of the game are about how games are won (up to and including how endgames are won).  If you want to win, you must learn your Reinfeld and your Nimzovitch. 

   I think the book Winning Chess Traps, by Irving Chernev, is a very good book on openings.  In it is everything one needs to know about playing the Cambridge Springs Defense.  Dr. Max Euwe, Andrew Soltis, Edgar Mednis and Alevander Kotov (or even our friend Jeremy Silman) are more for strong intermediate players, who already should understand Nimzovitch and Reinfeld.  Andrew Soltis' book Pawn Structure Chess is very good, but not so comprehensive as it emphasizes only certain chess openings like the Slav/Caro Kann and King's Indian formations over others.  Once people have mastered Nimzovitch (My System) and 1001 Brilliant Sacrifices, they can go on to Euwe's Books Chess Master vs. Chess Amature and Chess Master vs. Chess Master.  All of these other books are about structures and not about tactics. 

    Simply put, structures are static and tactics are dynamic.  Mikhail Tal put the capitol "D" in dynamic for us, while Fischer, Botvinnik and Karpov played with more of an eye toward chess structures.  Tal looked at Frank J. Marshall's games and decided against sacrificing pawns in the openings.  He elevated queen sacrifices to an art form.  He did not like to sacrifice his pawns.  When Reinfeld wrote his 1001 Ways To Checkmate he wrote that the only reward for sacrificing ones' queen should be  a checkmate.  Tal went one step father and learned to sacrifice the queen for presumably won positions.  What Schlielmann called the "true sacrifice", rather than the "sham sacrifice" (where one can see all the sacrificed material must be returned to you).  It is often difficult to calculate exactly what material you do get back after a queen sacrifice, including what it is worth positionally.  Probably more than any other book, Schlielmann's " The Art of Sacrifice," has been copied and imitated in books by other people.  Therefore I must conclude with, learn your Nimzovitch, learn your Reinfeld and learn your Schlielmann. 

Chess in a nutshell.    "Simple as ABC .... 123".

So let's get out there and sacrifice those queens people.

" What happened to me?  My name starts with a C."             

                                                    signed, Chernev. 

The Ending.