Why Tactics will never make me a better player.

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1tannguyen
Hokaido wrote:
Tactics suck and heres why. I KNOW there is an advantage. How do we get into the advantage? WHO KNOWS. Doing tactics only make you see whats already there, not how to get there. How does that make you better? It doesn't. I have done thousands of tactics, have seen the EASY adavantage on most of them and yet can still not beat 900 rated players whem I am 1000 - 1100. How does a player get any better? This is starting to frustrate me sooooo much I read all the time " to get better than 1000 do tactics" well guess what it hasnt happened and i ask HOW DO I GET BETTER?

I would love to see if you have any updates or insights to this. What things have you done since then? What training methods have you been using? Just curious as I feel stuck myself. 

Smallqpower11

I learned that sometimes people just say random stuff

 just like I wish I don't sound stupid to GMs

Bgabor91

Dear Hokaido,

I am a certified, full-time chess coach, so I hope I can help you. happy.png  Everybody is different, so that's why there isn't only one general way to learn. First of all, you have to discover your biggest weaknesses in the game and start working on them. The most effective way for that is analysing your own games. Of course, if you are a beginner, you can't do it efficiently because you don't know too much about the game yet. There is a built-in engine on chess.com which can show you if a move is good or bad but the only problem that it can't explain you the plans, ideas behind the moves, so you won't know why is it so good or bad.

You can learn from books or Youtube channels as well, and maybe you can find a lot of useful information there but these sources are mostly general things and not personalized at all. That's why you need a good coach sooner or later if you really want to be better at chess. A good coach can help you with identifying your biggest weaknesses and explain everything, so you can leave your mistakes behind you. Of course, you won't apply everything immediately, this is a learning process (like learning languages), but if you are persistent and enthusiastic, you will achieve your goals. happy.png

So, the question you asked is not so easy to answer, but I can tell you one thing for sure. In my opinion, chess has 4 main territories (openings, strategies, tactics/combinations and endgames). If you want to improve efficiently, you should improve all of these skills almost at the same time. That's what my training program is based on. My students really like it because the lessons are not boring (because we talk about more than one areas within one lesson) and they feel the improvement on the longer run. Of course, there are always ups and downs but this is completely normal in everyone's career. happy.png

I hope this is helpful for you. happy.png  Good luck for your chess games! happy.png