How Would You Update Chess's Rip Van Winkle Who Just Woke Up?

I just read this article by IM Danny Rensch:  "Who Was the Best World Chess Champion in History?"

He uses the CAPS rating system, and this rating system says Magnus is the the greatest.

Anyways, he then goes on to write this:  "... 

Or you can take the red pill. The red pill uncovers a whole new world of scientific research. This research opens the reader to a world in which we face the reality of just how good our game has become, and how hard—and amazing—it is for the players of the modern era to play against others who are also preparing deeply with machines.

Our modern champions have, in essence, learned to play more accurately. More precisely. More like machines. More like gods."

So I have two parallel questions:

1)  If you could resurrect Capablanca or Alekhine and they could wake up after a deep cryogenic freeze, what would you suggest they do in terms of study and practice to catch up with Magnus and Kramnik and Anand and Hikaru, et al?

2)  I'm coming back to chess after a nearly 30-year hiatus.  What should I do to get back into competitive form for tournament chess?   There were no chess engines when I played.  Descriptive notation was beautiful to me.  No digital chess clocks.   No time controls where there are time increments.

This is what I think based on reading the chess.com forum and the wacky world of www.

1.  Be a tactics monster!  Don't go into any tournament until you achieve 2000 in tactics trainer here at chess.com or at chesstempo or something like that.

2.  Learn how to use a chess engine.  Learn what the numbers mean.

Anything else to catch up with 2017 chess?  I "retired" with a 1762 rating.  I think the "B" player of 30 years ago must be markedly inferior to the "B" player of today.  True or not true?  Analogous to IM Rensch's contention that past World Champions just can't match up with today's computer-assisted 2700 Elite.

There are fewer tournament players and fewer chess clubs in the USA now than 30 years ago.  I agree that the opportunity to get better faster because of the Internet, Tactics Trainers, etc. is there, but I also think there are many more distractions today than in the past.  So I don't think 1762 represents any better ability now than then.

If Fischer, Tal, Alekhine were brought, at their peaks, into today's world, they'd all be top-10 players because they'd adjust to the better training and info systems, while retaining their amazingly insightful skills.

Hm...interesting observations and questions. Here is my input:

First of all, I will admit that I am not a fan of the CAPS system. It is an interesting approach, but looking at it from a more mathematical point of view there are too many variables involved for it to be very accurate.

Now, to answer your questions:

1) Assuming that the resurrected players were still in their prime, I would say that they would catch up with/study modern opening theory. They would probably also make use of all the new technology at their disposal (train with chess programs and engines, use databases, etc.). On an unrelated note, upon reading the words "deep cryogenic freeze" and seeing your avatar, I couldn't help but think of this:

2) Since you've been away from the game for a while, you will surely need plenty of review in all parts of the game. Yes, getting good at tactics again is key (you should especially familiarize yourself with the basic patterns and then work up from there), but there are other things you probably should study as well. Review your openings; make sure you can get to decent positions in the middlegame. Reviewing the principles of strategy, positional play, and endgames is probably beneficial as well. To summarize, while I think tactics and openings are some of the more important things you should study, you should try to make yourself a "well-rounded" player and make sure you have your basics up to par. Even stronger players sometimes go back to basics; I read a blog in which an IM recorded how he trained for an upcoming tournament day by day, and one of the things he did was he reviewed basic tactics. However, I have not seen your games and my above statements are only based on what I have read on this thread. Thus I highly recommend reviewing your long games (reviewing blitz games is almost useless since they are often full of blunders; I recommend reviewing games with a time control of 15 minutes and 10 second increment or longer) with a stronger player (this could be a human coach or an engine - or both; in your situation I would probably choose human or both). The stronger player could help show you where your weaknesses are so you know specifically what part of the game to study.

Also, I think that modern ratings are very inflated. Back around the early 80's, chess experts were rare and GMs were gods; nowadays GMs are uncommon and super GMs are gods. GM Ben Finegold stated that, if you wanted to change an old rating to a modern day one, you should add 200-300 points to the old rating. Thus I don't believe that the modern day class B player is much stronger than the 80's class B player; I think the opposite is true.

One of the primary activities would be gathering the world championship matches and top modern tournaments of the last few years and letting them review all the games.

Past champions were highly intelligent in terms of chess, and motivated to learn. They wouldn't need my advice.

Form will mostly be tactics. Regain the habits of looking for and calculating forcing moves. Also, play a few games every day.

There are little kids rated under 1000 in tournaments. There's no need to be a "monster" before enjoying a tournament

You should rekindle the habit of looking for forcing moves though. Checks, captures, and attacks on undefended pieces.

That's not necessary, but it's easy enough if you have someone to walk you through it, and it will let you keep up with the lingo. People are much more likely to say a position is +0.7 than something like +/= these days.

They're uncommon, but some players refuse to use an engine, thinking it will make them lazy in their analysis, but even they know the basics of how engines work.

IMO none of those make much of a difference.

I've heard from a few older players that this is true to the tune of 100-200 rating points.

Regarding brunnhilde's comment above mine, I agree that might be necessary for the top players due to some inflation at the very top, but not so much for class players. If you think of GM simply as a class of player at a certain percentile, then of course as more players play, there will be more GMs. There will be more experts, masters. Of course more D, C, and B class players too. However these days people have access to more information: databases, cheap books delivered to your doorstep or device, and engines.

Nothing much has changed over the board. Im just back from Ten year break and see no difference during play.    Only thing that is different is nobody seems interested to analyse game after. they just go home and look on engine to find truth.   Ratings seem slightly more inflated now, I have the impression that an 1800 player now is weaker than before

Dear Brunnhilde,

Valiant Asgardian Warrior, Defender of the Seven Realms, thank you so very much for your  thoughtful input.   I like the graphic of Gru doing the deep freeze on his enemy.  That was funny.  I totally forgot about that part of the movie.

Tactics and a well-rounded game.  That's what I'll be working on.

That's a bummer.  Moving away from the tournament hall and doing a post-mortem is one of the best ways of learning.  Also, a great possibility of making a friend too.