Chess is 99 % tactics

yes to what degree though is the thing that I find interesting.  Its probably impossible to answer.  It could be really helpful though for if you know your opponent has a weakness in calculation then you could steer the game into more chaotic waters, if they are calculating machines then perhaps you could try to employ a more strategic approach or pursue a policy of disengagement knowing that they are likely to hoist themselves on their own petard sooner or later attempting to sharpen the game for no reason other than they cannot find a plan.

Clearly the more theory you know the less you need to calculate.  The more endgame you know the less you need to calculate.

No one is claiming that you will eliminate the need for calculation.  What was actually claimed was that if you both play theory you will not need to calculate at all during that part of the game.  If a game averages 40 moves and you know twenty moves of theory the most you will need to calculate is 50 percent of the time,  I cannot say why you are having trouble accepting this or feel the need to regurgitate to me what I have stated previously with the utmost clarity.  What percentage of a game is pure calculation I cannot say, What I can say is that its not 100% nor 99% of the time as has been claimed here and elsewhere. 

As for Magnus let Kasparov tell you about his approach and how it contrasts with his own.

 "Carlsen’s greatest chess strength is his remarkable intuitive grasp of simplified positions and his tremendous accuracy in them. I coached Carlsen for a year, in 2009, and I was amazed at how quickly he could correctly evaluate a position “cold,” seemingly without any calculation at all. My own style required tremendous energy and labor at the board, working through deep variations looking for the truth in each position. Carlsen comes from a different world champion lineage, that of Jose Capablanca and Anatoly Karpov, players who sense harmony on the board like virtuoso musicians with perfect pitch."

Try not to calculate anything - Magnus Carlsen

Very good. And as a massively type 2 thinker (Kahneman) , really difficult to me to do that.

I do stuff like this all the time. I'm amazed kingscrusher is talking about this like it's amazing... especially considering it's the world champion.

Kasparov made a similar comment about a Karpov game, that he sacrificed with no calculation, because he could just count the attackers vs defenders and trust there was a win somewhere. Which is to say this isn't a unique thing. All strong players do it regardless of style.

Also I tend to calculate too much in OTB games, and not trust my instinct enough... but still, in simple positions like the one showed, I might spend zero energy on considering Qb5 because it's just a stupid move, for the reasons he gives.

I actually made a topic about some moves like this. Moves my opponent played that I wouldn't even have as candidates. I give 6 examples.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/terrible-moves-that-defy-explanation

In both games the king had pawn cover and the e file wasn't opened, so I think this is a bad example, but yes, definitely you shouldn't be dogmatic. At the same time, when a move has a lot of principals working against it, you can't enthusiastically suggest it without giving some analysis because 9 times out of 10 it's going to be bad.

As for kings in the center, another example that comes to mind is a Scheveningen type structure after Bg5, white takes the knight, and gxf. Black can play the whole game with the king safely on e7.

It's been shown that the amount players calculate is like a bell curve. Beginners don't calculate much because they can't. GMs don't calculate as much because they don't need to. Players in the middle, around a 2000 rating, calculate the most.

Of course this is just over the whole game. In a specific position that calls for deep calculation, of course the GM might calculate very much more than a 2000... but at the same time maybe not, because they can easily ignore bad moves and calculate to the heart of the matter quickly.

You should see my analysis for turn-based chess and vote chess. Often extends to multiple pages. Of course there is much more potential for analysis when you can keep a record of the tree and edit it. Thinking in trees - like Kotov advocated - is quite hard.

And of course the further you calculate, the more moves you're ignoring.

There was some interesting quote by a GM, I wish I could remember, but it was something like "deep calculations are usually filled with errors, so don't do them" something unexpected like that.

Of course in correspondence style chess, it's important to look deeply, but for OTB play I thought this was interesting advice... and certainly if only for the sake of energy, I've found that it's good to avoid deep thinks (unless of course the position is at a critical moment).

Hello robbie_1969, shame I was not online a few hours ago to assist your argument - I 100% agree that chess is not even close to 99% tactics. I believe that tactics are important, but many positions simply have no tactics available. These positions often require a quiet move to take a square, or opposition, or to reposition a piece etc. In fact I will even argue that this positional play is arguably stronger, as a tactic can be seen and prevented; however many positional moves can't be stopped - or can be stopped only at a high cost. 

Obviously, the percentage of tactics varies from game to game. However for chess in general (as I believe is being asked here), my hypothesis is perhaps close to 50% could even be considered remotely close to the percentage of tactics. Positional endgames, opening theory, and simple space-gainning techniques offer little to no tactics; it is absurd to state 99% (or even the arrogant 100%) of chess is tactical. I am not making statements against chess players, or people in this forum, but I am speaking of the topic at hand. I recognize that this claim of chess being 99% tactical is an old claim; I am merely stating that I find it just as ridiculous now as then.

Chess is a game that I love. Chess is a game of beauty. Chess is a game of creativity. Chess is a game of strategy at its essence. Why would anyone claim that it is something tactical? This would imply that this is ONLY a response to opponent's play. One can't play a "tactic" if the opponent has not played anything yet. Although most chess players know that what the opponent plays greatly impacts your move however, some forget that taking their move into account does not make your move a response. Players who only respond in chess often lose, one must take the initiative eventually. More often than not this initiative is not another empty threat to attack something, it is often a defending move that halts the attack, but places threats of your own - usually positionally. 

99% of moves aren't tactics, and chess skill isn't 99% tactics, but in 100% of games you're required to calculate (or otherwise have knowledge of) forcing moves, even if none of them end up being played.

For the third time no one is disputing that we need to calculate during a game of chess.

Each and every position has tactics

definition of tactic

The Reason why I bolded "action" and "specific end" is that in chess players play simple tactics such as a bishop move to threaten a pawn chain or making a battery but their also things like forks and pins. Note: everytime you threaten or capture a piece, you are using the hanging piece tactic. Now you might say "what the heck where is all the strategy?" so let's look at the definition.

So in contrast to tactics, strategies are big and have an overall aim and most importantly are played on during the range of many moves, whereas a tactic might end 1-3 moves. 

But I will say the 99% is too much of an exaggeration since it would be like saying out of a hundred moves, 99 of them would be tactical.  I would say that chess is 85% tactics.

Thankyou we are in complete agreement.

I think its more accurate to state calculation, what percentage of a chess game is calculation.  This avoids semantic arguments and confusion.

I also raised the idea about tempi, how much tempi we need to calculate to.  Of course the answer is until there is no more forcing variations.  Andrew Soltis in his book 'Studying chess made easy', cites a game between Karpov and Kasparov where nether player needed to calculate more than two and half moves ahead, that is five tempi, for the vast majority of the game.  Chapter 5 'Two-and-a-half move chess', page 124.

Oh, "a chess game" as in 1.

Yeah, way less than 99%.

I was on this topic at 5 in the morning and completely misunderstood what you were getting at in the OP.

Lol interestingly enough so was I, wide awake at 4:46 AM

What It Takes to Become a Chess Master by Andrew Soltis
"... going from good at tactics to great at tactics ... doesn't translate into much greater strength. ... You need a relatively good memory to reach average strength. But a much better memory isn't going to make you a master. ... there's a powerful law of diminishing returns in chess calculation, ... Your rating may have been steadily rising when suddenly it stops. ... One explanation for the wall is that most players got to where they are by learning how to not lose. ... Mastering chess ... requires a new set of skills and traits. ... Many of these attributes are kinds of know-how, such as understanding when to change the pawn structure or what a positionally won game looks like and how to deal with it. Some are habits, like always looking for targets. Others are refined senses, like recognizing a critical middlegame moment or feeling when time is on your side and when it isn't. ..." - GM Andrew Soltis (2012)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708093409/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review857.pdf

"... Most of the time you can find a good move - if not the best move - with a low level of calculation. How low? Two and a half moves into the future. ..." - GM Andrew Soltis (2010)

I guess an example would be the position after 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nd2 e5 3 dxe5 Ng4 4 h3, when Black perceives that 4...Ne3 can be played because of 5 fxe3 Qh4+ 6 g3 Qxg3#.