Why study tactics?

The "openings sinkhole"
One of the most common themes in chess-related discussion forums concerns how to quickly improve as a beginner.
Many beginners fall down the sinkhole of purchasing books on various openings and mindlessly memorizing opening variations.
The time is more often than not wasted because play typically quickly goes "out of book" and they are unable to punish digression from theory.
Having memorized lines instead of understanding them, they are totally lost.
This is often compounded by the fact that these players have a very poor understanding of opening principles and chess fundamentals.
The final nail in the coffin is, however, the fact that games are generally lost by blunders rather than won by sound play underpinned by deep theoretical understanding.
Beginner obstacles to improvement
Beginning players have a lot of behavioural obstacles to overcome.
Most notable amongst these are impulsive play, lack of tactical awareness and board blindness.
That is why probably the greatest "bang-for-the-buck" at this level is training in tactics.
But beginners are often frustated by puzzles and give up on using them as training tools.
I think you might experience less frustration if you start by understanding that not all puzzle or tactic training serves the same purpose, a distinction not often made in discussions on the subject.
How to use puzzles to improve
Tactics can be divided into two groups, as far as training is concerned.
The first group concerns learning the "tools of the trade" so well that they become as natural to you as breathing.
We are talking about pins, forks, skewers, etc.
There are probably 40-50 "tactical themes" that every student of the game should be familiar with.
You learn these by doing randomly generated low-level (very, very basic) puzzles that hardly require any thought at all.
If you practice them enough, you will not only be familiar with them, you will become proficient at them.
Doing puzzles like these on a daily basis will allow you to develop an intimate knowledge and understanding of all the simple or elementary tactics which will become the foundation of the second group of tactics which are more complex and require different skills.
Acquiring useful patterns and templates
Training the first group of tactics will also equip you with a vast array of useful patterns which your brain will also turn into more general templates which you will eventually recognize as play unfolds on the board.
These patterns and templates are extremely useful because they allow you to either see or intuit tactical opportunities or situations and respond to them appropriately in far less time than if you did not have that baggage.
They are useful for the hand-to-hand stuff on the field of battle but just as importantly because they confer a tremendous time-management advantage or disadvantage according to where opponents fall on the tactical spectrum.
Other benefits of doing easy puzzles
Training the first group develops your "tactical awareness" as well as your basic tactical ability.
It also contributes greatly to curing "board blindness" because these puzzles are so simple that the only way to mess them up repeatedly is by having an incomplete picture of the pieces arrayed on the board.
Learning a craft
This first part of your tactical training is analogous to learning a craft.
The second group of tactics is comprised of more complex puzzles that require and develop two skills that are essential to becoming great at chess: visualization and calculation.
People who master these skills can become "artists of the chessboard".
That is my understanding of the use of training in tactics.
Mind you, I only just recently started and am a mediocre player.
Chess.com has a fantastic puzzle training feature which I use for my daily drills, going from 0-1800/2000 before "resetting all progress" and starting from scratch the next day.
How much time do I spend on a puzzle ?
The lion's share of my time is spent on very, very basic tactics which are solved in a matter of seconds.
I only very rarely spent more than 1 minute on tactics at the upper end of this scale.
I consider all of these tactical problems part of the first group of tactics.
Once I can do all of these in my sleep with a very high success rate, I will start spending a bit of time on the second group of tactics.

If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment: it means the world to me.