chess 99 % tactics agree or disagree

so one of my groups has a guy quoting a great player saying chess is 99 percent tactics - maybe at high levels but at my level it is all about who makes the most mistakes and he who sees the mistakes first wins

- I offer this example as proof - minding my own business later I saw his knight unprotected so I took it with my queen then saw checkmate with my knight / queen - like this twas a mistake ????? - - if I could ENGINEER this that is TACTICS - - -  this was he who sees the other guys mistakes first wins NOT TACTICS - if I could engineer this ( tactics ) -  I would be a 9000 player - so high players tactics yes - low players by guess by golly - agree or disagree

Definitely disagree. 

The weaker you are, the more important tactics are because blunders are common.

The stronger you get, the rarer blunders get, and you start have to force your opponent into dicey positions where he can either blunder or go wrong. 

Even at my low level of play, in long games, if I don't make good positional moves, I will get beaten every single time if just going tactic-hunting, and the computer analysis will confirm that with this sort of poor strategic play, I indeed had zero tactical shots, and the opponent had all the winning chances.

I used to think you had to be like master level to play like this, but turns out even in 3-min blitz games, it's not uncommon at my low level of play to have no-blunder games where it's primarily decided on strategy until the final killing blow.

I much prefer Joel Benjamins quote:

Chess is 100% calculation.

I'd disagree with that 100% calculation comment, except for computers.

If chess were 100% calculation, Magnus Carlsen at age 9 would have been as good as he is now, since he could calculate super-deep thanks to his brain back then. He however, had to gain a lot of chess knowledge to keep rising.

For class players though, it's probably largely true - the one that calculates deeper and more accurately will win the majority of the time. But there are plenty of times where calculational ability is similar, and knowledge of specific positions and how to play them becomes the dominant factor.

Chess is 99% Harmony between the pieces.

i think the lower you are in the rating scale, the more the comment about tactics being 99% is true - even up to a relatively high level, like when i play at the 1600ish level on chess.com, id say the majority of my games are stil that way - lots of people play purposely boring games where they trade off material, but still, giving up easy squares or tactics at some point (after maybe a lot of moves and time pressure) is usually what determines things, i dont expect that to change for the near future, but it will just get harder and harder

In my opinion the question of how much of chess is tactics, how much strategy and planning is like asking how much of a book is words, how much sentences/paragraphs, chapters,verses or whatever. It's 100% made up of words. The other things may or may not be there depending on the style of the book. Similarly, chess is 100% tactics/calculation, and the other things may or may not be there depending on the game. 

I love chess strategy, but it is overrated IMO. Most games are contests of will lost by mistakes caused by a slip in concentration, a momentary distraction, or fatique. This is true in games from beginner to the highest levels. Beginners just make bigger mistakes. Where a beginner might hang a piece, the master might miss a 3-5 move tactic that in the long run costs him a pawn. 

We may see games selected for the books showing a grand strategy pushing through to its logical conclusion, but if you play through the games of any famous player on a database, you'll find for every game like that 10 where both players just play normal chess until someone makes a tactical error, someone wins a pawn or two, and wins with solid endgame technique.

Now, it's possible to play to foster combinations, but then sometimes you'll find nice tactics in quiet positions, tough defensive positions, and even in much worse positions. Conversely, you can often establish a beautiful knight outpost, file control, etc. and have nothing to do with it. All depends on the position. 

This is an interesting topic.

And the match with this guy was to prove something. Right? A false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

"tactics are the servants of strategy" 

Very well said!

Tactics appear out of thin air because their's balance in nature.

30% tactics, 70% water

90% pieces...9% board...1% people

in my case is 100% mistakes... 

If you dont calculate, how do you come up with the "100% judgement and evaluation."

So when youre playing a game, and you are analyzing what move to play, you arent calculating?

Chess forums are 5% threads titled "chess is 99% tactics".

He was not being 100% serious, it's basically a joke.  'Strategy' is the twin sister of tactics in chess.   

Thats what i was saying...you calculate.

Please, chess is at least 50% memory, then 30% ability to see what is going on, 10% calculating, 5 % luck, 5%. managing time and 12% body odor.

I totally recognize this. I had read in books that you have to consider several moves and still look for a better one and i calculated and calculated some more but i didn't know what to look for and just confused myself. I tried to hard so to speak and should have been told that as long as you don't have much chess knowledge all you can do is keep things simple. Months or years later one can calculate deeper.