I tried teaching these "ideal set-ups" to kids when I started coaching. I gave it up after seeing a few games that looked like:

I did a few tactics puzzles and I'm no so sure that information is all that useful. Overall it didn't take long to get to 1300 and the breakdown of skills are about what I would expect.

It's safe to say my tactics are not seriously suffering for my skill level. If anything the small number of puzzles I did do seems to suggest spotting simple mates is a weakness of mine. According to the data I should be learning mating nets which might be a good skill to have. I don't even know what desperado is so I'm not surprised I got 0% on that. Double check I'm also not surprised I got 0% on that. I'm not a big fan of forceing moves just to force a move. Some people are a fan of it, I'm not. Everyone has their own style. 

Another thing of interest to note which is not surprising is the time it takes me to solve the problems compaired to the average time spent by others on the puzzles. I play a lot of blitz so I should be faster at spotting things.

I mean really, for everyone who is saying tactics are the way to go, how much time do you spend in that tactical trainer?

Your tactical skill IS your rating up until about 2000 or above...

lol!

I had similar problems, your diagram made me smile :)

headbite:

Forcing moves is not a "preference," it's a fundamental key to becoming a strong player!

You way underestimating the importance of tactics. Many, many players are telling you to work on this; if you don't want to, then don't. Good luck.

When I was a young player I did my share of tactics, but not nearly as much as I should have because I didn't larn how to calculate properly and didn't develop a natural tactical vision until I was nearly 2000.

I became 1800 for the first time in January 2004. After spinning my wheels for four years, I was 1850 in February 2008, and decided I wanted to become 2000. I worked seriously on my openings and for the next 4 months or so solved 40-100 tactical problems per day, the first 1000 with Chess Combinations Encyclopedia (CD) and the rest with CT-Art 3.0.

With such intensive tactics study, I more or less "hardwired" tactical vision into my head. I no longer feared missing tactics against anyone, even IMs. And I did this when I was 24-25 years old.

I played in tournaments with strong players, and reached 2000 on December 2, 2008.

RatDogFriday put it bluntly, but I can't disagree.

I train in tactics with many tools, including Chess.com's TT. I do not keep track of how much time, but can tell you that I have correctly solved something over 3000 problems in 2013. I've gotten quite a few wrong, too.

My program is outlined in a series of posts on my blog, the most recent of which is http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2013/10/training-log-september-2013.html

You're certainly not forced to do anything. If some middlegames make you bored you may as well not play them. If you're not having fun then no game is worth playing. You'll probably win more games out of enjoyment alone. The issue though is that you won't serve up much of anything if you're a clumsy chef with forks and skewers.  

Even if you could somehow play the opening like a grandmaster by pure memorization it is unlikely that you could hold that performance in the middlegame and endgame. This is why imo opening theory isn't a big deal. It can be instructive and fun finding new ways to develop your pieces but it isn't everything and is surely not what makes chess difficult for beginners. 

Looking at openings and trying out new stuff is ok but you can't let up on tactics and general principles - the things that are present in every position instead of just the first couple of moves.

i dont think you should consider a players "strenght" by his/her rating, my rating (national as i dont have fide) is 854, i usually play against people at 1300-1400 etc, and i win most of those games, because i simply look for the right moves. i do know that i am underrated, because i rarely play in tournaments out of town, but still the rating shouldnt be all that matters. when it comes to the opening sugestions though, i would suggest you take a look at the sokolsky opening(1.b4) it contains very much attacking opportunities, but it is very risky to play and you should only play it if you know how to attack and defend properly( i reccomend you learn to see more than 2 moves in advance as you wrote above first though, as it is hard to play, depending on the opposition.)

Ratings are math. The math does not work that way.

How can I move past classical openings?

I'd say a better question is: "how can I start to learn the basic ideas in the middlegame positions that arise after the classical openings I currently don't know very well in the first place?"

Not sure if it's been suggested yet, but you could try the King's Gambit as white (I'm a big fan)?  It will more than likely throw you into sharp, tactical positions, which should help you to practise and improve your tactics as well.  Also, it's full of potential danger for both sides and it's rarely boring.

You could probably learn some of the basic lines against the classical accepted/declined, cunningham and fisher defenses (tend to be the most common responses) fairly quick.  Also, you might catch some people 'off guard' if they're not prepared for it, so it might help neutralize the 'opening knowledge' advantage that you perceive your opponents to have.

Otherwise, I agree 100% with studying tactics being the fastest way you can improve.

I do take difficult blitz games and run them with an engine to get alternative ideas. It's funny that you say I don't have a clue about strategy. I think in order to stay ahead on the clock you have to have a strategy so that if your first move isn't playable you can easily find a second move that is consistent with your overall strategy in that game.

Tell me what's so great about playing a 15 minute game against someone who is just going to trade off all the pieces and get to a drawn endgame? The idea that most long time control games are going to be high quality is stupid. About once a week I'll play against an engine to get my defences up.

Using an engine to see where you went wrong won't do much to get you to play better, unless you have a photographic memory which you can use when actually playing.

15 minute games turn into draws? About 5% of the time for me. You can play take...take...take if you like, but sometimes it works better to leave a piece on the board and let your opponent worry about losing it while you pile on pressure somewhere else

You might not get much from an engine, I find engines give simple alternatives that don't require any memorization. Let's look at this last game I tossed in the engines. It is a f7 attack that normally I don't have a problem defending against. For some reason this variation got the better of me. Engines perfer 9 Nxg6 Nf6(attacking the queen). Maybe even earlier 5 d3 Bh4+(taking advantage of the pawn on f4). I see this game as mainly a variation of the fried liver. The bishop on e7 stops knight to g5. This game was the first time I've seen someone come in on e5, I'll have to remember to get a pawn to d6 before harrassing the bishop next time.

Yes this game was a disaster. Most variations where someone sacks on f7 I survive the attack no problem and then they are just the piece down. This game took all of about 1 minute for me to lose and 5 minutes to study. I think that is a much better way to learn then to play 2-3 games per day with 1/2 of those being boring games with nothing to learn from them. 

Now just to show you that I don't totally suck here is a game where I was experimenting with c4, black decided to mirror my opening which was annoying. Easy way to punish that is to exchange off queens and stick the black king in the center. The game has a few example of simple tactics. Great example of a bishop sticking the knight on the edge.

So I think playing 50 games a day might produce 5 hard losses that can be learned from. 5 games might have blunders that may or may not be caught by your opponent. The main point being that noticing a blunder 1 second after you have played it in game and hopeing your opponent doesn't notice it has more of an impact then looking at some random position and trying to "find the best move".

Aparently there are some tactics like desperado that I have no exposure to so spending 5 minutes to learn the basic idea might be a good idea.

Anyways.... defending my position is kind of pointless at this point. 

You don't need an engine to see that 5...Na5 was bad. This is just a rare case where it even had a tactical problem. Some really old saying that goes "a knight on the rim is dim" would've prevented all of that. 9...Nf6 prevents mate at least. Most importantly the opening had no bearing on that game but tactics did.

In the second game 14.Rab1 Bxf3 15.Bxf3 Rxd2 wins material and is another missed tactic. Again the opening didn't affect the outcome. 

Based on these games it is quite clear that openings aren't an issue but tactics. You can't go wrong doing puzzles or watching Morphy games as already mentioned.

Also your idea to 'punish' Black by exchanging Queens and leaving his King in the center isn't really a punishment at all, in fact you usually want your King in the center after exchanging Queens and a few pieces anyway so he's already there!