Do tactics really help?

My former chess teacher made me do a 50 puzzles every class. He said tactics help you increase your rating, but they have never had an impact in my games. I almost always pathetically miss obvious tactics and end up on the losing side. Learning basic tactics are ok, but do we really need to solve puzzle after puzzle? Do puzzles help you guys?

Not really I guess. I mean if you are solving puzzles you need to learn from them as well. You need to register the pattern in your head. And it will eventually help you in the long run. It may not in the short span of time however

I am not solving that many puzzles last days, and that's why I can't convert my opening and middlegame advantage to win. You undestand how benefical and important they are after you start to suffer.

I had say you have to look for a particular advantage of yours and a weak square in your opponent's camp and try to create threats.Here's where tactics are really important is my opinion.Puzzles are just to give you the idea of these tactics and you have to try using them in your game.

Your tactics ratings are insane, for your rating. If you're not converting games, isn't a tactics problem. Have you studied any other area of chess? Ever?

How does a 1600 rapid player with 33 3 min and 39 5 min, complain that their tactics are costing them games?

If you are very good at tactics but can't seem to spot and exploit them in your games, then it's probable that one of two factors is holding you back.

Either:

1) Poor situational awareness. Perhaps the tactical opportunities do come up in your games, but you miss them because you fail to spot them and just play some boring move "on auto-pilot" instead. This can happen because there is one major difference between tactics puzzles and a real game: with the puzzle, you already KNOW from the start that a winning tactic exists; you just need to find it. In a real game position, you have no such assurance.

2) Poor strategy, poor positional play. Tactical opportunities don't just float down out of the sky like snowflakes. They appear in positions where you already hold the advantage. This is just common sense... you won't find a winning move unless you have a winning position. That's what MAKES it a winning position: tactics flow from a superior position. So perhaps it's your strategy that's at fault... you don't see any tactical opportunities because you never reach the positional superiority that would generate tactical solutions.

Exactly!.Well said @blueemu

I'm good at positional chess as well.

You realise the value of an object only in its absence...

im not going to lie, i used to be a puzzle guy i used to do tactics every day when i was 1000-1200 elo player. now that i have stopped doing puzzles i see myself losing games on tactics, in my case i stopped doing tactics, in your case probably you are playing too fast, there is a thing known as a checklist it comprises of checking your opponents king safety, your king safety, piece activity, material imbalances etc. you should get your rating of puzzles to 1600 that will be good i will suggest you 15+10 time control and 15 puzzles a day, tell your coach 50 is too much man, tell him 25 maximum

also seeing that your 1300 on blitz, you need to have some positional play too so watch some of this to improve positional play

https://youtu.be/NKBbyDDzzmw

Doing tactics only works if you: remember the piece placements and the type of tactic, and do it over and over again. And it doesn’t work if you do 50 random tactics each day, much less if you spend like twenty seconds on each.

also if you don’t know how to gain a positional advantage then you won’t have tactics in your games at all! Not favorable ones, at least...

B1ZMARK. How do you feel about a player who is rated ~700 below you in blitz and ~500 below you in rapid, having higher puzzle rush scores than you on both 3 and 5 mins (off of less attempts, too), whilst claiming that they're "good at positional chess as well"?

That's ridiculous, right? I certainly think that anybody playing at only around my level of chess with those puzzle scores, has to have some huge weaknesses to their game.

I'm certainly not trying to attack you here by the way, Levent. I feel like if you were maybe more honest with yourself about possible weaknesses in your game, you'd be able to improve so much faster. Nobody scoring 39 in 5 min puzzle rush should be playing at the standard of patzers like myself, and I mean that as a compliment.

50 puzzles a day sound absurd. If you spend an average of 3 minutes on each one (which is not much), it takes 2 and a half hours. This teacher is crazy.

I would laugh at them and stalk their games for hours and compile a list of games where they get completely molested by their opponent, heavily annotate it with snark remarks and post it in a public forum 

Tactics definitely help.  I did 5,000+ in the last month (I created my chess.com a month ago) and I already see a drastic improvement.  Try reading How To Reassess Your Chess by Silman.  It really is helping me with utilizing my pieces to max effectiveness and being aware of imbalances on the board.

Doing even more push ups is not going to help you run a marathon. Even going from 50 push ups to 150 push ups isn't going to be doing much good. 

Likewise, I feel like the right chess puzzles help a lot, but doing them mindlessly will not. And I feel like too many people do them mindlessly. 

For sure.  if you are getting under 50% of your puzzles right, something is seriously wrong. Taking your time and thinking through "why" you should move there and then calculating possible repercussions will definitely help improvement.

I get 47% of my puzzles right rip

Hahahahaha. I hate to think what you'd do to someone who actually wronged you...

Mental note: don't piss off B1ZMARK. He wouldn't have to search through many of my games lol...

thanks guys for the help : )