Will Playing Tactically When my Style is Positional Improve my Chess Skill?

A professional is by definition someone who makes money by doing that thing.

Maybe some 2500s bum around and win local tournaments, sleeping on people's sofas, in vans, or whatever.

But for a professional chess player to afford things like a house and car, maybe 20 people in the world can do that by playing, and they're all over 2700. Then maybe a few 100 can make money by coaching and writing books, and that's a random assortment of titled players, mostly GMs.

Ok. I guess I won't be one of those.

Online blitz ratings are close to OTB classic ratings?   Blitz is just "Beat The Clock".   It's nothing like classic chess.   I prefer to take the average of my online rapid and daily ratings and use that as my estimated OTB classic rating, since there's no classic rating category on here.   My 1600 rapid and 2000 daily ratings average out to 1800, so that's my estimated strength, since I haven't played in a real, OTB tournament for about 25 years.

Most people, from what I've seen, pretty much stop improving after about 8 to 10 years anyway. And yes, kids improve faster.

So you're at a good age to become really good and have fun with it, and then when you get closer to adult age you can focus on something else while still being a good player

I am not attempting to demand anything. I am simply posting my reactions.

The gameplay of chess.com blitz is very different from OTB classical.

Even though blitz is different, the ratings tend to correlate pretty well for most people... but of course not all people. Older people and new players are bad at speed games, so it doesn't work well for them.

You can google things like chess.com rating to OTB rating and see tables people have compiled. Some are years old, and wont work well. In particular I know rapid ratings have fluctuated quite a bit in the past. Right now they're probably the best they've been I think in large part due to chess.com's improved cheat detection.

Someone who is a full-time chess player and makes his living off of chess.   The elite GM's.   It's extremely difficult to make your way into that small group though.   Most young players end up going to college, getting a degree or getting a "real job" and stop studying chess at around age 17 or 18.  Some meet women, get married and have families too.   Things change in life and not everyone pursues chess as a career, especially since the prize money usually isn't enough to live off of, unless you're at the very top elite level.  

Yes, exactly.   I wish I had started studying chess when I was 13.  I learned how to play at 9, but didn't start studying the game until I was about 25.  Way too late to ever become a GM.  

That sounds like me.   lol   I could definitely see me doing that.   

I heard in Europe there was something of a roving band of 2500-ish GMs who would travel around winning local tournaments, sleeping on sofas and such

So if you were a "lowly" FM who was hoping to win a tournament when one of these guys showed up you'd be out of luck.

"Will couch surf for chess winnings"

Yeah, but I'm talking about playing strength, not actual USCF ratings.   Ratings will always be higher on here, because it costs money to play in a USCF tournament and most people don't play in them much after the age of 18.   So, their USCF ratings are usually much lower than their actual playing strength.   I was rated at 1465, back in 1993, which is the last time I played in a USCF rated tournament.   However, I've been studying the game, on and off, for the past 26 years and estimate my current strength at around 1800-1850.   My online blitz rating sucks though, because I'm a deep thinker and am much better at longer time controls and daily games than I am at blitz.   So, I average my online rapid and daily ratings to get my estimated classic playing strength.

There are plenty of adults rated under 2000 who play in tournaments

If you show up, sure there are plenty of kids, but there are old guys too, some in their 60s and 70s.

"Building a repertoire ... The first step is to think about your personal style. Do you prefer open, tactical positions or closed, strategic positions? Does an attack on your king make you nervous, or are you happy so long as you have a counter-attack? Do you prefer main lines, or something slightly offbeat? ..." - GM John Nunn (1998)

Do you see any reason that KingSideInvasion, while choosing openings, should avoid consideration of questions of that sort?

Do you have some reason to believe that you can decide how everyone should use the word, “style”?

"Building a repertoire ... The first step is to think about your personal style. Do you prefer open, tactical positions or closed, strategic positions? Does an attack on your king make you nervous, or are you happy so long as you have a counter-attack? Do you prefer main lines, or something slightly offbeat? ..." - GM John Nunn (1998)

Are there any benchmark rules for posting?

This isn't just an issue in chess, the same conversation happens in art. You have strengths and weaknesses until you're good enough to have an actual style.

Nunn uses the word style, so what. He's using it colloquially. You can disagree, in which case we can agree to disagree. I don't really care because I'm confident in this assessment.

I guess I'm a hybrid, semi-open style player then.   I'm not a big fan of closed positions or wide open tactical positions, but I can play them.   I prefer semi-open positions, like the Sicilian, French and QID as black and 1. d4 openings as white.   I can attack, counter-attack or defend, depending on what the position dictates.

I have no idea what you're trying to ask here.

A year from now I'm going to be reading an article:

"While our "spongebot" was highly effective at fooling users into talking with it as if it were human, occasionally people did become frustrated and point out it was posting like a bot, not taking context into account, and spamming quotes"

Kindaspongey has got to have some kind of OCD.