If you took away all positional understanding from a computer (say Stockfish on a 100 core cluster) and gave it an opening book and the values of the pieces (and the objective of checkmate), then it would probably score very well against 99% of people who know how to play chess. Just tactics, and more basic than that, just tactics to win pieces and deliver mate.
Without the means to make the plan a reality the plan is worthless. Planning and positional play are what make great players. You can be a good tactician and be a good player with only a rudimentary understanding of positional factors. As Ari Ziegler said "a tactician beats a positional player nine times out of ten".
"Chess is 99% tactics" told Richard Teichmann and so many after him. But is that quote, really, a pearl of wisdom?
Of course a beginner should focus on sharpening his tactical abilities and skills, such us calculation and counting, and absorb important tactical motifs and mating patterns. Most of the beginners' games are lost and won because of tactical blunders.You should learn the alphabet before start reading.But that makes strategy and positional play inferior to tactics? And what is strategy and tactics after all?
In my mind, tactics is a sequence of moves, the methods and motifs we use, the combinations we create, based on counting and calculation, in order to achieve a short-term goal.
But the important is the goal. And where that goal is determined from? From the given position of course. Assume that the center is locked, you have a bad bishop and your opponent has a knight. You should try to trade. This will deprive your opponent of his long-term advantage. This is your goal and plan in that position. Strategy tells you what to do. Thereafter, you try to figure out how to do it. Analyse, calculate, exploit some tactical motif, create a ombination that leads to the trade.
Even an attack against a castled king in the middle game, cannot succeed without some important preconditions eg disrupted pawn structure in front of the king, open lines and diagonals and files nesr the king, lack of defenders and superiority of your own force. Those are positional factors.
The simplest example: even the tactical motifs demand a certain placemnt of the pieces. The pin requires two opponent pieces on the same file or diagonal, the discovered attack two of your own pieces on that formation etc
Chess is a positional game by its nature. The position orders us what to do and we should obey to these commands. Nobody checks every possible move on the chessboard. Having a strategy, a plan based on the positional elements is absolutely necessary. It directs us. The tactics is just the way to make that plan reality.