How would amateurs try to get better before the internet?

I was reading a really cool book from the 1970s called "Secrets of a Grandpatzer," written by a psychiatrist, where he explains how he got better at chess (somewhere between 1700 and 2000) with the resources available back then. It was interesting because he wasn't shooting for anything beyond being a good club player, and he was adamant about doing it on a limited time budget. The training and improvement program he offered was pretty systematic, with neat little touches like using Reinfeld's 1001 combinations book as a tactics training method.

This made me wonder: How did most regular amateurs try to improve before the internet became a major resource? Did anyone else write back then about how to improve?

That's a fantastic question that gets to the heart of how much learning has changed. I often explain to my students that before the internet, improvement was a slower, more deliberate process that revolved around a few key resources: chess clubs, books, and magazines. A player's world was their local club for regular play and post-game analysis with stronger members, and their personal library of books on openings, tactics, and annotated game collections from the masters was their primary engine for growth.

Did any in particular stand out as commonly used at different levels? By sheer numbers, for example, I'd expect there were a lot of Horowitz/Reinfeld/Chernev books floating around back then, but I've heard varying things about how well they were regarded. Especially the "potboilers."

And relatedly, how were the books used?

(The second question may sound silly and obvious, but chess books sometimes seem to be used in very particular ways. I've run across bits of advice from chess players then and now about how they expected beginners to work their way through chess books -- specific procedures for playing guess the move with old master games, which ones to read at which levels, recommended annotation systems for chess problem collections, going through game collections with two chessboards to work out main lines and variations, and so on -- so I'm curious if there was any common wisdom back then about what to read, and how.)

That is fascinating, and thanks. Were tactics not as emphasized before you could just breeze through thousands of problems on the computer? I have heard that there was more emphasis on abstract positional rules back then (like what you'd find in Tarrasch), and less on learning to calculate tactics, but wasn't sure how much there was to it.

(And speaking of computers, did the early, primitive home chess machines and other early "microcomputers" have any kind of impact in the 70s and 80s? Or was it still too early for much of that?)

Studying with a book and real chessboard and playing in real tournaments.

Also, the 70s and 80s were too early for computers to help.

Tactics WERE definitely a big deal and were practiced. I used to know a Russian master that said he'd take his tactics book with him on the train daily and work the positions mentally. He said it was common to study/solve tactics regularly as part of normal training.

In the 90s, I sat with a dusty copy of "Modern Chess Openings" and copied the moves on a physical board. Then I squinted at the position and tried to figure out why the moves were made. I did this because I had no human opponents to play against. But I enjoyed it. Lots of learning.

Books by Chernev, Reinfeld, and Nimzowitsch also helped demystify the game, quite a bit.

Before chesstempo there were tactics puzzle books.

We had these things called...Books. Still my preferred method of learning.

I became interested in chess in my sophomore year in high school. My school had a club and we competed almost weekly with teams from other schools.

I read everything I could find on chess. I must have read at least 25 instructional books, by authors including Reinfeld, Chernev, Horowitz, Ed Lasker, Fine, and others. I also read at least 20 games collections of great masters and tournaments—Fischer, Tal, Botvinnick, Alekhine, Capablanca, Fine, Spielmann, Rubinstein, and others.

I played in my first USCF tournament toward the end of the school year. My rating was 2000 by the time I graduated from high school and was over 2100 a year or so later.

So, I am a big supporter of chess books as a way to improve. Many people today advocate playing speed chess or solving puzzles as a way to build a “library” of configurations of chess pieces. I think one can do this better by playing through the games of masters.