I think it's true what they say about chess TACTICS

I think it's true that lower rated players should focus more on chess tactics than other more esoteric parts of the game such as opening or endgame.

I just became a platinum member to use tactics trainer and I feel it is helping my positional chess as well.

What is your opinion?

each to its own. some need better positional understanding. depends on your weakness

Yes, I think it is correct to "Focus more on tactics".

To focus exclusively on tactics, no I think that would be a big mistake. Yusupov in highly regard book "Build Up Your Chess, The Fundamentals" has 24 chapters. Eleven of those chapters focus on tactics.

I personally think it is important to start building a strong foundation of all parts of the game even at a low level. For example, opening principles are important to learn and at their root are primarily positional in nature. Silman in his "Complete Endgame Course has sections for players unrated to 999 (which are basically tactical being simple mates and such), and then a section rated 1000-1199, which starts to get into King and Pawn endgames.

Personally, I spend part of each day doing 10 tactics problems on that other site. It has clearly helped my play a great deal. But I'm also going through Yusupov, for a more systematic and balanced approach, as well as going through "The Amateurs mind" by Silman for positional aspects.

If I had to cut back to only one thing, I think I would do Yusupov. There are a great deal of tactics in his book, but it is a more balanced approach on the whole.

so after reading all those books and tactics etc etc your gonna reach 1000 in Blitz?...

I know players that do nothing but tactics, and play sketchy opeings like the halloween gambit, and they have made it to USCF Expert.  They play fine at that level, but as soon as they play up, they get destroyed.

I know players that solely concentrate on strategy, and play "sound" openings.  They struggle to get past USCF C/B level.  

I have no idea what you mean by "low rated players", so i will not comment on that.  

But what i dont get is all these posts asking the same questions all the time: "What part of the game should i study?"  Ohhhhhhh...I dont know...how about all of it?

The problem with tactics training on chess.com is that it subtracts points from your rating for mistakes, so you can't just learn things without being punished for trying, which is a very bad system.

Isn't there an option to do unrated tactics? Pretty sure there is

Actually, the problem is bring more concerned about an online rating, than the learning.

Very true

+1

i am now sure that tactics is the way to go since it is the most universal way of studying chess and everything else just follows from it.r

Such an incorrect statement.

No question tactics is very important at virtually any rating.

I use the tactics trainers here and at chesstempo.  I do NOT like the fact that you are often penalized for taking more than 7 seconds in finding the correct result here at chess.com.  When doing the tactics problems you'll improve more if you spend time to find the right move(s) rather than guess, hoping to gain more rating points by doing it in a shorter period of time. Don't worry too much about your tactics rating: worry more about finding the right answer.

Another important thing is to go back and find the right solution after you miss it, and in all problems assign one or more TAGs - names to the tactics used to solve the problem.  Then ask yourself why it took long to solve the problem.

You should know the names of all tactics on these pages:

https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-tactics--definitions-and-examples

https://chesstempo.com/tactical-motifs.html

Also, I'm currently reading a tactics book that is the best I've ever read:

Martin Weteschnik, Chess Tactics from Scratch, not only examples, but principles behind how to create pins, discovered attacks, etc. Plenty of diagrams so you can follow in book alone without a board.

Finally, there's a great but relatively simple book for non-masters on how to plan your game - and that's related to tactics because you often need them to get in a position to execute a plan:

Fred Wilson, Simple Attacking Plans – four straightforward principles demonstrated with 36 annotated games.

Another one that's a little more involved but similar:

Michael Song and Razvan Preotu, The Chess Attacker’s Handbook, fourteen principles demonstrated by games and with example problems.

Why not just study tactics by playing actual games?  That at least will assure that the tactics examples you have to solve are realistic, in contrast to the ones you will find in tactics training settings, which are often ludicrously artificial.

This would not work. In actual games you would miss the tactics and learn very little.

Tactics are very important but not everything follows from learning tactics. You need basic principles of playing openings and basic ideas on playing endgames also.

Also you need to learn about Pawn Structure.

Not only is it horrible advice, its not even accurate.

Thats like saying, you should just do more math problems, without actually studying math.