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

You want these middle game skills before you tackle openings. So just study tactics is half right.

How do you know this? Who actually reaches 1800 studying this way?

No one I knew developed solely on tactics and positional study. We beat up our copies of MCO, played each other a lot, followed the big matches in the magazines and looked at endgames some. We didn't study tactics at all beyond learning tha basic motifs because that idea wasn't around back then.

We all became A and B players in our first year of tournament play. Several of us went on to become experts and masters.

What is this weird fear of class players studying openings?

I dont think its a weird fear.  Just by some of the posts i see on chess.com, i think a lot of the "Dont study openings..." comes from seeing so many people posting the following:

"I am an agressive player, help me find an opening"

"Im an agressive player, what opening should i play?"

"Im an agressive player, but lose in the opening.  What am i doing wrong?"

"Im a tactical player what openings should i play?"

"I know the <insert opening here> 20 moves deep, but i lose in the opening.  What am i doing wrong?"

"I study openings, but lose in the middlegame, why?"

A common theme i know, but i think this highlights a lot of the issues with people saying you shouldnt study openings.

Well I mean I reached 1800 studying that way, or rather when I began studying that way. Jumped from 1300 to 1800 and on to now ~2205.

I prefer to look for tactics in real games. Although, in the beginner stage, I think studying some motifs (independent of games) helps. Studying tactics out of context helps too, but I highly doubt it is necessary or the only way to become a stronger player.

Perhaps I am just speaking of a different way of tactical study. I believe looking through games (your own or others) and trying to spot new ideas is a more enjoyable way to approach chess improvement, and possibly just as effective. Maybe even more effective.

Studying "motifs" in the beginner phase essentially trains us to spot complications of the rules of the game, then we can move on to looking for them in real games instead of doing tactics trainer all day like zombies.

Well I mean I reached 1800 studying that way, or rather when I began studying that way. Jumped from 1300 to 1800 and on to now ~2205.

Rogue_King: Did you really not study openings or did you study them then make up for your deficits in tactics and postional play? Then resume opening study at 1800?

I can believe it's possible to make it on tactics and positional play. As I say, there are players so talented they can go a long ways by just playing and paying attention.

But I don't believe we understand chess development nearly so well as all the confident general claims about how newer players should learn.

The guys I came up with didn't go by the various party lines and they turned out well above average. Maybe they were among the too-talented-to-fail. Or maybe those party lines are bull.

Most advice about how to learn chess strikes me as having the intellectual heft of the latest dietary recommendations.

I dont think its a weird fear.  Just by some of the posts i see on chess.com, i think a lot of the "Dont study openings..." comes from seeing so many people posting the following...

I_Am: But it's one thing to tell new players not to overboard on openings or not to expect a magic bullet there.

It's another to categorically say, "Don't study openings."

Studying tactics out of context helps too, but I highly doubt it is necessary or the only way to become a stronger player.

DrCheck: The previous generation of Americans became 1800+ players without tactical trainers or a rich tactics literature. So, sure, it's not the only way to become a stronger player.

But given the way the brain develops pattern recognition, tactics drills are a fast, reliable way to go. I think American chess is better for its  new emphasis on tactics training. I wish that had been recognized when I was a young player.

The Soviets certainly used such drills in their chess training.

Heres a novel idea...Study the whole game! 

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Heres a novel idea...Study the whole game!

A good idea, but hardly novel.

Sure, study the whole game, except what does that mean and how?

Do players only study whole games? Do they study openings for 30 minutes, middle games for 30m, endgames for 30m, and tactics for 30 minutes? Does the mix change according to their level of skill or their personal strengths, weaknesses or preferences? How important is personal coaching?

I don't claim to know. I'm arguing against what seems to me the dogma of those who make grand pronouncements about how others should learn.

I suspect there are answers to my questions, or at least better ones than we currently have, but there has been very little systematic research on chess learning.

It seems to me that chess is where body building was in the 1950s. People knew you had to go to the gym and lift weights and eat differently, but beyond that, most of what people did was based on gym folklore and a fair amount of that was wrong.

Ipcress, if you read only what is posted in the chess.com forums, you may be right. 

But there is plenty of well-researched information available to those who really want to improve. 

I rather doubt anyone will improve dramatically by taking random advice from these forums. Take a look at what FIDE or USCF has available You may be surprised to see how much good information there is. 

The ugly truth though is that it takes hard work to improve at chess. The good news is that it's a game, and you improve by playing! 

But there is plenty of well-researched information available to those who really want to improve.

SF: Cites?

I've looked and seen very little. There's the granddaddy DeGroot book, a bunch of stuff (which I don't find all that persuasive) on how chess improves classroom performance, and the Charness paper:

http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/publications/PDFs/Charness.Tuffiash.Krampe.Krampe.Vasyukova.2005.pdf

If you've got more, I'd love to hear.

The Soviets poured a huge amount of money and effort into their chess programs with very impressive results. They may have some real studies backing up their techniques. But I haven't seen those either.

One of my favorite papers.

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~hsstffg/preprints/Training_in_chess.PDF

You can just go to their website. I could cite numerous sources. But I think you're capable of looking it up yourself.

Yes, De Groot is an excellent place to start. It's not the only place.

Go to USCF and take a look at their scholastic section. 

"Seek and ye shall find." (No citation)

I started to read this, but the summary suggests they just polled a bunch of tournament players about their study habits.  I probably track my study more than the average bear and I bet I'd be way off estimating how much time I spend on certain activities.

A longitudinal study is the best way to approach this, but I haven't come across anything like that.

SF: You were the guy who told me that Michael De La Maza provided lots of his own games for persusal in "Rapid Chess Improvement."

There were three games.

I'm coming to doubt you can support your own claims.

"Put up or shut up." (No citation.)

I found significant segments of at least eight of de la Maza's games in his book. 

But if you really couldn't find out much about the Soviet chess school, maybe I've overestimated you.

Here's a site to get you started for information about chess coaching:

http://www.uschess.org/content/view/9474/131/

And here's a link to USCF's bibliography:

http://www.uschess.org/content/view/7866/131/

And here's a link to FIDE's training system.

http://trainers.fide.com/fide-trainers-system.html

SK5: The Charness paper was not ideal but it's about as good as I could find. It was an attempt to quantify what chess players did and the concrete effect on ratings.

I would like to see real studies where one form of training is compared with a control group. It's not easy to do and god knows where one would get the money to do it, but as it stands most claims about chess learning are anecdotes and folklore.

Clearly good chess players study and there are many coaches out there who help some of them. Study pays off but whether doing A is better than doing B with approach C or approach D etc. is up for grabs.

SF: Your original claim about MDLM was games not fragments.

Your links are the usual stuff about how some people believe chess should be taught or studies about how chess improves classroom functioning or mental functioning -- just as I said earlier.

Nothing in that material backs up whether it really is better to study tactics or not study openings etc. It's just the untested opinions of coaches, which have their place but are not what I'm looking for.

Coaching opinions change over time. When coaching opinions are rigorously tested they are often found wanting.

Chances are there is no single "best way", but various studying/playing routines that may yield good results. They may vary according to the individuals too. Maybe the best study technique is the one that actually gets you involved, who knows ?

You probably won't find any study that shows the philosopher's stone to chess improvement, if only because a lot of external factors would be very difficult to take into account (inner competitive drive, stamina, nervous system...). You can't measure an improvement in chess simply by taking a chronometer, so it's a very tricky business...

Anyway, I wouldn't dismiss the opinions of experienced coaches or experienced players too quickly either. When science comes short, common sense grounded in years of experiments and observations is still worth something