Controversial opinion - Chess strategy is extremely overrated

I know many people won't agree with this but the more i play chess the more i feel that chess is more of a game of throwing punches one after the other(and dodging punches) than it is about  developing a general plan or working with a particular "structure".  I have seen many youtube videos of people like gothamchess explaining some systems and general chess strategy but in my experience and atleast at my low rating all of these things seem to fail to just plain old tactics, combinations and just reacting solidly to every punch thrown at you without needing to have a general plan at mind.

Does anyone else think the same?

I feel the same way. I guess things will change once we climb further in the rating ladder.

As Finegold put it in one video "if you're 1800 at chess, and 1200 at blundering, then your rating is 1200."
Yeah, tactics matter a lot.

Strategy is what you think about in between blunders.

The more I play, the more I start to think that strategy is underrated. I know, I know...  99% tactics... But even in Blitz, many of my games are won or lost because one side has a terrible position in the first place. Often the final combination just seals the deal... So if you ignore strategy, you might never get a position where you can execute your winning combination...

     Obviously, the player with significantly superior tactical abilities will almost always win. Once players reach a level of competence where gross blunders and obvious mistakes are infrequent, a good plan--strategy--will move the game in your favor. When two near-equals play the player that has some idea of what they are trying to accomplish (while the opponent is just looking to "throw punches") will win more often.

My counter to this point is that if in a game some player(let's call him X) has a terrible position then it means that X must have missed some combination or some forcing line to begin with which led him to that position. 

EDIT - I disagree that strategy is underrated. I'd say almost 95% of all chess tips videos on youtube is heavily strategy based. Everyone keeps repeating the same thing to work on chess strategy etc etc.  If something is underrated then it's tactics. Hardly any tip video explains how crucial tactics are.

That's a good line to remember

Better tactics flow from superior positions. SO yes Strategy is important.

Of course that blunders decide many games, but some strategy has merit even on my level. This is because in many cases if you don't have any plan and don't know what you are doing, you will blunder more easily because you will eventually feel uncomfortable in a position.

@kartikeya_tiwari

I lose many of my games due to some tactical oversight, which is perhaps the worst part of my game.

But incidentally, we played a game a week or so ago and you won. Sure, you could say that I eventually made a mistake and lost (which is true in almost every chess game), but in my opinion the underlying reason was that I allowed too much activity for your knight in the first place.

I was unwilling to play 20. g6 because I thought that my king might be too weak. So if I came up with a plan to not allow your knight that forward move, perhaps I wouldn't have such a complicated situation afterwards, and wouldn't be in a position to play a game losing move.

All of that being said, you were ultimately a lot better in the game and deserved a win, I am just pointing out that although many games are decided by a blunder, sometimes there are underlying reasons for those blunders, and if you make some good planning, you might avoid being in a complicated situations where it is much easier to blunder.

That statement also doesn't really hold true in my opinion. It only really holds for very high level of play. What most often seems to be the case is that just one slip up of variations in the head can lead to some devastating counter attack or tactic by the opponent.

I am sure that quote holds true for titled players(like IM, GM etc) but for the vast vast majority of people it does not meet ground reality.

Thats true. But it does apply for people at our rating as well to some extent. Only if we were to stop making blunders and throwing away things in one move

in blitz, maybe, but i feel like above 1600 strategy is a real thing

Usually the player with the bad position misplayed the opening, didn't know where to place the pieces, or which plan to follow... 

Yea, most videos are on strategy and openings because there is more to way more to say about it. A video on forks wouldn't be that interesting. Also every software can tell you that you missed a mate in 4, but not what the right plan in a certain opening is. But if you did a survey, I am sure that most players would agree that chess is first of all about tactics.

I went over our game again and i think that game serves as a good support to my point. You were better but i think you went wrong when u played ..21 Nf5.  From positional point of view that move was good since it seems like your knight on h file is really badly placed while my knight was placed very well. However i think this is where positional chess fails since even if it seems like that knight was badly placed, it was perfectly fine. If one calculates variations then he can realize that the black had no strong combination to make use of those strongly placed pieces.

That was my point. Many times a badly placed piece can just be ignored or a blocked bishop can just be left alone in order to make threats elsewhere. I think this general plan of activating bad pieces is very overrated as well. Generally it's good but we often we don't need to really do something about it.

Chess seems to be about finding the right moves one after the other more than following general principles at least at our rating. I think tactics are so trivial for titled players that they gravitate towards positional chess. But recently many super GMs in some rapid events have been playing odd moves too so i am confused at this point. Several times magnus for example left his bad piece just stuck or allowed his pawn structure to be destroyed in return for some strong attack or move... i don't know about top level but for most players i think strategy is overrated

I want to give another example. A few days ago, I played one Najdorf game which was decided by a game losing blunder by my opponent. But let's see the game:

Now you could say the opponent blundered, and that is correct. But if you look at the game you will see that things went slightly wrong from the start. In the end he was under some pressure and just cracked, so I would say that those small concessions made my opponent more susceptible to making a game losing move.

You are correct that Nf5 wasn't good (it failed tactically after all to that sacrifice and I had to play Kh2 instead), but what I wanted to say is that if I played 20.g6 many of my problems wouldn't be there. You would have one forward knight move but from there I could even exchange them (if I unpin my queen first). It would still be complicated, I admit, but In any case, allowing that knight to land where it did was already not ideal. 

What I want to say is that strategy and tactics are in many cases intertwined. I am not saying that you have to have some elaborate plan. Strategy could be to just not allow the opponent to play what he would like to play. It could be a 1 move or 2-3 moves plan. There is, in many cases underlying reason for a blunder because we are humans and we do not like to defend that much, we do not like to give away activity and so on. After a while we crack.

Of course sometimes you will just make a blunder out of the blue, but already on our level (I say our but I say that only roughly, it is obvious that you are better than me), I think that in 90% of cases there was some underlying reason for that blunder.

"Chess is 99% tactics." - Teichmann
Engines prove him right. Engines destroy grandmasters with middle game tactics from any opening imposed on the engine.

@tygxc Sometimes you rely too much on some other people's thoughts. This quote is a perfect example. Let's just take it to heart. For instance, if it was true, one could just drill tactics online, buy some tactics books, not even play chess because chess is 99% tactics and would become a great player. We both know that it is not the truth. Tactics are an important aspect, but it is far from enough.

Engines destroy people tactically but remember that most engine like moves are all those h4s of the world, king moves in the middle of the mayhem and those rerouting bishop and back knight moves. And in order for engines to employ tactics they have to have a better position in the first place, which means that tactics is not 99% chess.

In any case, I am pretty sure that your 2100 rapid rating didn't come just from practicing tactics, but you probably did a lot of different stuff to improve your game. If chess was 99% tactics, you could just try to learn tactics for 99% of the time and you would get to where you got, which is not really how it works.