What happens before there is a tactic in the position?

To learn what a "superior position" means, study the books recommended in the blog article mentioned in my post #9.

There should be no argument over tactics vs strategy. They are separate concepts which work together, hand-in-glove.  Tactics is a sequence of moves executed with the goal of gaining some advantage, or preventing your opponent from doing so.  Strategy is the idea behind the tactic together with the planning involved prior to its execution.  

As people have been saying "tactics flow from superior positions" 

You get a superior position by, among other things, playing sound moves and following concepts.

If you are able to control more space, your pieces are more active, your opponent have weaknesses etc it's likely you are putting more pressure on your opponent and chances of him making a mistake increases. For example, sometimes in order to defend a threat one must create a new weakness. Capitalizing on those weaknesses comes from studying and practicing and repetition and experience.

Practicing puzzles and tactics is obviously great help. However, when you're doing a puzzle you know there's a tactic and solution available. In a real game that is not always often the case. So how do you know there's a tactic in a real game? Well, with practice and repetition you'll get better at spotting patterns and tactical motifs - forks, skewers, pins, discovery attacks, double checks, desperados, deflection, interference, removing the defender and others, etc...  some are easier and more intuitive than others, but there are always certain factors in a position that suggests the possibility of a tactic that you should always keep an eye on.

• Your opponents undefended pieces can be a tactical opportunity
• A piece of your opponent that is defending two of his pieces might be a tactical opportunity
• Pieces of minor value x-raying a piece of greater value from your opponent can be a tactical opportunity
• A pinned piece of opponent can be a tactical opportunity
  etc etc

Slowly you'll develop your intuition, depending on the position, sort of a "spider sense" that tickles when you see one or some or similar of the feats above and be like "there might be a tactic here" and then you'll look for it.. sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't... sometimes there is but we miss it....  eventually you'll see yourself spotting some tactics with more ease than you do now.. and you just keep building on that.  Also before making a move considering the "checks, captures and threats" in the position can help.

It's important, however, that not only you practice the puzzles, but that you also take your time when playing before making a move (without getting into time trouble, hence the importance of playing longer time controls). Good luck 

No it's not. Not necessarily.

Sometimes your position is so dominant that most moves are good moves even they are not the best. For example if your opponent doesn't pose you threats or make an obvious blunder early - say they hang their queen - you are already up 9 points. So even if you make sub-optimal moves that lowers that advantage to +7 +6  +4  according to stockfish's eval, and  you win the game, then chess.com's report is not going to accuse any serious blunders.

@RussBell I don't think Fischer had the WCC title, good advice and great articles though

#28
Fischer became World Champion in 1972 by defeating Spassky.
At that time Max Euwe was FIDE president.

I have played played chess for sixty-seven years but I can still remember my initial learning.  Philidor said "pawns are the souls of chess" and I learned from the very beginning that the structure of the pawns was the key to what sort of game to expect.  I can recommend Hans Kmoch's "Pawn Power in Chess" which verges on the quirky but does show how pawns influence strategy.  Some simple examples.  A sound solid pawn structure will assist you in resisting the opponent's threats but may hamper the free movement of pieces – especially rooks.  An open free structure leaves you vulnerable to being jumped on, but gives you clearer firing lines to attack.  If the pawn structure is locked, then the player who can break it open stands more chance of winning – but failure to break through can lead to a tumble backwards.  Pawns further away from the main action can be a mere irrelevance in a middle game, but can suddenly became a huge advantage as the pieces thin out and can't get across quickly enough from the other side to prevent substantial advances towards queening.

ah I didn't know that , i always thought there was some drama during that match and it was cancelled or sum

#31
There was drama before and during the match.
First Fischer did not want to show up, but Jim Slater doubling the prize money, a motivational phone call from State Secretary Henry Kissinger and pep talk from dr. Anthony Saidy did it.
After Fischer lost the 1st game, he complained about the television cameras. As this was not resolved to his satisfaction, he did not show up for game 2, so he was trailing 0-2.
Fischer proceeded to win the 24-game match 12.5 - 8.5 after game 21.

That is not how engines work. If your move throws away 3 points of anvantage (like going from +9 to +6), that will be called a blunder.

Chess.com's "game review" might work that way, but that whole thing is just a bad joke, nobody should use it for anything.

#33
+9 or +6 is the same: white wins.
Going from +9 to +6 is no blunder, it is a useful simplification.

From time to time I hope that once you should stop spreading this nonsense. Well, I need to keep hoping.

#35
It is the only thing that makes sense.

As a chess trainer, I've always taught middlegame strategy from the start, even to low rated players. Tactics are important, cause they win you games, but if there is no tactic, you need to be able to make a good move. That makes good piece play very important. You need to learn to put those rooks on open files, to put knights on outposts, to not get your bishops stuck behind pawns. After that you'll need to learn about weaknesses, most importantly: isolated pawns. You need to learn about grabbing space and what to do with it. Those principles will give you enough knowledge to find small positional plans that will improve your position. That's all there is to it. I've always used Silman's book 'How to Reasses your Chess' for this. I don't believe it's too difficult for lower rated players (with the exception of dynamics, like the initiative) and I do believe it gives nice explanations to the strategical concepts in chess.

When you're talking about OTB games that reach all the way to the endgame, I would suggest that this is also the point where you have to start learning bits and pieces about the endgame. Most important is the pawn endgames, because they decide whether you can trade the last pieces off or not. Other than that, there's not much endgame that you should want to study right now. 

I am confused though as to how it can be that your games frequently reach the endgames without any tactical mistakes. That's highly unlikely for 1400-1500 OTB. It might mean that you're not playing actively enough with your pieces. Maybe you're even trading unfavorably (if you trade it's much better to let the capturing be done by your opponent, as this frequently makes your pieces better and/or gains you time to play other useful moves). All in all it's hard to really pinpoint a precise problem without looking over one of your games though (you could post one in this thread maybe?). 

So all in all, people aren't wrong when they say that tactics is the most important thing to train. Tactics win you games. But whenever there is no tactic, you need to be able to make a normal good move. For that you need to learn about strategy and good piece play. If you haven't yet, I'd strongly suggest for you to start looking at middlegame strategy.

Online auto analysis is sometimes overly lenient. If you stepped though the game with stockfish yourself you'd undoubtedly find a number of important errors.

Notably, sometimes the auto analysis ignores very instructive (and very serious) strategic blunders while complaining about completely reasonable tactical "blunders" (that aren't actually blunders).

Online auto analysis is a fun gimmick, but if you're serious about chess you'll study from a real source of information i.e. a book.

There is a lot of good general advice in this thread already, but to get specific advice, it would be helpful to see an example of your OTB games where you say this is happening.  It is hard to judge from your online games because you are mostly playing blitz and making a lot of mistakes.

Agreed, but I was getting at something more concrete in this case.  If his opponent made 0 mistakes and 0 blunders, and won the game, it likely means he made a serious blunder very early in the game and there was no way to recover.  For example, he dropped a piece in the opening and then virtually anything his opponent does that doesn't give back material or walk into checkmate will be a good move.  It is extremely rare for a 1300-1400-rated player OTB to play an even game well into the middlegame without making a mistake (and likely a blunder) somewhere.

I was referring to the OP's assertion that he runs into 1300-rated players OTB that make 0 mistakes and 0 blunders.  No idea where he is getting that analysis from, but without seeing at least one example game, no one can give him any specific advice.

I never said people should. I was explaining how it works. When OP said his 1300 opponents were playing whole games without significant mistakes he was obviously referring to chess.com's report. You said it's suspicious and I am explaining to you why it's not necessarily suspicious. Because with a big advantage you can play subpar moves and, even if stockfish's eval bar drop, chess.com's report might say you made no mistakes, which is what he was referring to.

Also, just because stockfish calls something a blunder (even tho it just gives a number as far as I'm concerned) but said "blunder" is your advantage dropping from +9 to +6 but that happened because you had to, for example, give up your bishop in order to eliminate all potential counterplay from black and go into an easily winning endgame, it's not a blunder, that's just a smart practical decision.

For instance, I think most people would rather play a GM in a simplified endgame where pretty much any move maintains +3 than play them in a complex middlegame where in order to keep +9 I have to find a 7 move long sequence full of subtleties.

Point of clarification, it usually will mark that as a "missed win".  It does the same if you had a mate-in-1 but found a mate-in-2 or mate-in-3.