Can you really become a class A player by studying tactics?

de la Maza is reinventing the wheel and advertizing it as the latest miracle cure. 

What de la Maza gets right is that tactics are important and that it takes hard work to get good at it. What he gets wrong is his constant self-advertising, even within the pages of the book! He repeatedly tells you to follow his method and you will become an expert or a master. 

How many people have actually become an expert or master following his method? I think the count is currently 0. Yep, even he didn't follow his own method because he himself studied openings, endgames and complete GM games as he admits.

But again, the idea of drilling tactics is quite old, and one that has been recommended by the Soviet chess school. Korchnoi and Botvinnik have both talked about practicing with hundreds of 2-3 move puzzles. Yusupov has said that 2-move checkmate puzzles are excellent for improving pattern recognition and tactical vision! 

So, de la Maza has reinvented the wheel. That's not a problem. We should celebrate the wheel. But his book is about a wheel covered in snake oil. 

Yeah, but 9 out of 10 NMs will be >2000 in blitz.

But I realize it's not the same. Some people almost never play blitz, or when they do it's not seriously.

It's just people tend to exaggerate, and if your blitz is 200-300 below most of those you claim as peers it makes me wonder. I'm a skeptical person.

How do you teach tactics besides giving puzzles / games as homework?

Chess.com's tactics trainer is amn excellent way to work on tactics improvement.  I like the timer...it adds a dimension of stress to the tactics. 

i play blitz on a laptop and just play fun openings id never play in OTB games just to try different positions.

personally i find chesstempo tactics trainer way more realistic and helpful.I definitely believe the tactics trainer here is not so good.

My tactics rating here is really low. I've only attempted a few puzzles because as a non-premium member, I only get 3 at a time. It's just not much fun that way. I need to warm up, and by the time I've warmed up, my daily allottment is up.

So, I stopped using it.

I consider my rating at +2100 or whatever it is to be very low. And I don't consider tactics to be my strong suit. I don't understand how anyone who is +1800 USCF can say with a straight face that their strength is tactics and have a tactics rating here under 1500. 

That's training, not teaching.

I was wondering how his coach taught him tactics.

I also prefer chesstempo.

i really dont like these tactic trainer things.

being given a position and being told, to find a winning move is completely different from sitting at the board and having to realize that there is actualy a winning move.

Of course you can't get to class A by only studying tactics. You will need to study openings as well.

Study everything. Fixes all your problems. Tactics would probably be the first to study for the longest amount of time.

Time split for studying (not including games): 

1200-1400 

70% Tactics 

5% Openings

25% Strategy 

1400-1600

65% Tactics

20% General Strategy

15% Openings 

1600 - 1800 

50% Tactics

30% Openings

20% General Strategy

1800 - 2000

50% Tactics

30% General Strategy

20% Openings

2000+ 

35% Tactics

45% General Strategy

20% Openings

What about

I made it past 1800 not studying tactics. 

What about under 1200???

Tactics should be your best friend

No they're not

:(

Cupcakes...try cupcakes

Okay!!!

I'm at 1665 with mostly tactics and some basic positional and endgame concepts.