Is Practical Chess Tactics and Only Tactics?

A well known saying is that tactics are most important until you get to 2000. Even Magnus Carlsen in a Reddit AMA says the same thing:

This is all well and good but I chose to play chess because I wanted to play a strategy game. But it seems like none of that matters until you work your way up to 2000. So in other words, I can't actually play the way I want to until I do a bunch a things I don't want to do.

When I do a bunch of tactics puzzles and drill patterns in my head ad infinitum THEN I'll be able to play some positional chess but until then it's all irrelevant because I will either blunder or constantly fail to find the tactical breakthroughs necessary to win games. So the strategy part becomes mostly meaningless and I end up moving my pieces around untill the inevitable blunder. 

But a lot of teachers really don't tell you this when you take up the game. They go on about strategy and planning and all these things but in reality only a small population of players will ever really get to do anything resembling real chess strategy. Most of the games will just end in some kind of tactic that had nothing to do with the ideas of the position. 

This is fine for people that like this but I don't and wasted a lot of time trying to learn about positional chess and where to put the pieces only to be faced by my low tactics skills which will keep that knowledge from ever being useful. 

So I tried playing go for a while and liked it because strategy seemed to count for a lot more. There are still really complicated tactics in that game too but they don't seem to completetly dominate the game unless you play with a smaller board.

I still like chess but I feel a little sour about how chess advertises things that seem to be reserved for more experienced players while the majority of players will be playing a far different game. 

We can even see this in how player like Petrosian would purposefully play weaker moves against lesser rated opponents because he knew he would win anyway. Again it's fine if that's what you wanted all along but it's not what I wanted at all and feel a bit slighted about it. If I had known this all along maybe I wouldn't have invested much time into chess and more into a game like go instead. 

Speaking from a very low amateur status, I see several replies:

1. Isn't strategy best defined as the ability to cause your tactics to attack your enemy's centers of gravity, and attain victory at the earliest possible moment?  In every field of study, "strategy" is a fairly amorphous concept, and the extent to which the word "strategy" applies is highly debatable.  In chess, I would say, yes tactics are responses to logical stimuli, but inherently, strategy is creating situations favorable to the use of tactics.

2. In the any serious pursuit, there are various fundamentals which must be mastered in order to reach the highest levels.  One would not walk into a Navy recruiting office and say that they want to be a strategist- you must master the tactics and mundane tasks in order to have sufficient understanding to create naval strategies.

Tactics is the art of knowing what to do when there's something to do.

Strategy is the art of knowing what to do when there's nothing to do.

The two are clearly related.

Question: What sort of opening systems do you play? You can "adjust the balance" of tactics vs strategy in your games by choosing to play different opening systems.

Players who want a lot of tactics in their mix might select gambit openings or other lines with active, forcing play. Players who want to play a more positional game should select semi-closed openings that put the emphasis on planning rather than on cut-and-thrust.

Tactics tactics before 1400 rapid rating.

penandpaper - I think it is true that you just simply have to get your tactics up to a decent level and should be the main focuses of players under 2000. However, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do anything else. You should study other things alongside tactics and of course play a lot and review. You can be developing other areas of your game at the same time, so that when you do hit a decent tactical level you are not starting from scratch learning strategy as well. Playing over whole games for example gives you something of everything and can be a lot more enjoyable than just drilling tactics. In fact just drilling tactics and not doing anything else is not very healthy.

penandpaper0089, I've had a look at your games here - all you are playing is 3 min blitz. Of course tactics plays a huge role at such short time time controls. Play something slower - 30 min or daily chess - and strategy will take more place in your games.

You don't have to limit your training to tactics only - learning many different things (tactics,  strategy, endgames) adds understanding and is more fun. But you can't avoid tactics - if your strategic plan is tactically unsound it won't work.

You need to play slower time controls like G30, G45 or longer, and even correspondence chess if you want to improve your strategy.  Just playing 3 minute blitz isnt going to improve your strategy.  

I've heard this before and I don't think it really really holds up. There are tactics in most positions in chess - they're just not always good ones. Openings don't avoid this if your tactics are bad because you will either A: lose material to something you didn't see or B: simply not defeat a tactically aware opponent because you don't have the tactical strength for it and they will not blunder. You will have the better position and simply fail to deliver the tactics needed to actually convert that advantage. 

There's even a drill here at chess.com where you start with like 10 free moves vs Black's starting position and you're asked to win against the engine. You won't win because your pieces look pretty - you'll win from creating tactics. Black is already worse and can't do anything but if it never blunders (which it doesn't) you will need tactics to break through. 

Another popular quote is that tactics come from better positions but that's not always true either. You can have a crap position and still have tactical chances. Maybe they aren't objectively good but at what rating does objectivity matter in chess? Surely not under 2000. Otherwise people wouldn't be so interested in unsound gambits. 

That's why all this talk of positional chess just seems like a waste of time and just gobbledeegook that attracts people to the game. Who cares how well you played if the only way to win in the position is to sac something and you simply can't do it? What good is a knight on d5 if you don't know how to use it in the attack? And how in the world will you even get that far if you can't even keep your pieces on the board long enough to get there? 

Without good tactics strategy just doesn't matter. If anything systems like the London only delay the inevitable blunder because the pieces take longer to interact. You have to attack in chess to mate your opponent and if you can't do that then well I guess you're wasting time. 

OK sure strategy is important but again it doesn't win games. Sooner or later that amazing strategy has to lead to tactics or else winning is impossible. And that's just the problem. If your tactics are bad then you're really just hoping that your opponent plays worse and leaves something obvious for you to find. Otherwise you just end up moving your pieces around doing nothing because you'll never find the final blow that's necessary to win the game. 

This is why some people will say that playing tactically is simply better because it's easier to win games this way seeing as the opponents' tactics aren't always going to be good enough to defend everything.  And that is what I believe now because I wasted so much time thinking that I was going to be a better player by learning complicated positional concepts and now I simply find myself in a situation where it's mostly meaningless because my bad tactical vision makes it all irrelevant. 

I liked learning about positional concepts but now I realize I should've been drilling tactical patterns. But I didn't get into chess just to do something like that. 

Tactical acuity indeed is impossible to overestimate. But surely a player will need all- round skill as he/she improves. So the study of strategic, positional concepts is  also necessary for improvement, as is the study of the  opening and the endgame. 

penandpaper, your argument has some sound points, but I think that if a chess game entirely avoided tactics, it would become less sound as an analogy for the real world.  Clausewitz said of war that friction is often the most important enemy faced by an army- the thousands of individual mistakes which add up to slow a march, or kill soldiers before they enter battle.  A commander who fails to understand friction is failing to understand the most important thing that can ruin his superior position.  In other words, mundane considerations like food distribution, keeping shoes on soldiers' feet, and having spare axles for vehicles are points that are discussed even by flag officers.  This gave rise to the statement by Van Creveld that amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.  My overall point being that ignoring half of chess misses the beauty of the game. 

I'm not saying strategical stuff is not important but that without tactics to back it up, it's just meaningless. While on the other hand great tactics and poor strategic play is still just fine for amateur players because their tactics just won't be up to par. And seeing as I am an amateur, tactics is king and I find myself at a loss because I'm not good at it and I don't have any interest in the tedious drilling of tactics over and over again. I didn't want to play chess as a primarily tactical game but for my level that's exactly what it is. I just lost a game today because of my poor tactical vision:

This is a 3 minute game. If it was a 3 hour game I doubt you would have missed some of these tactics. Blunders in blitz play are very common even in top level chess, especially when low on time. Try playing longer games.

 I'm getting the sense that we're debating semantics- which ultimately all debates are.  Step one, define strategy.  It's a large and ill defined concept.  I still think you're ignoring an interplay between tactics and strategy in which large tactical patterns approach being strategy in and of themselves, and small strategies like advancement of a pawn to control a square for later use by a piece on a turn where there's little to do looks like a mere tactic.  We're talking past each other until we define terms.

Strategy is probably the wrong word. It is better to say positional concepts or positional play. Regardless, whatever interplay there is between tactics and positional play is irrelevant if you struggle to keep pieces on the board.

I don't even believe that anymore. I'm better in almost all my games and still lose to a random tactic. No, all that other stuff is reserved for people that get over their tactical problems. Who cares if you make 40 good moves if you blunder on move 41?

You've been advised to play longer time controls and yet you just keep playing 3 min blitz. You can only blame yourself that your games are decided by random blunders and strategy plays almost no role.

Three-minute blitz is not a strategy game.

Agree with the above, and would add that in one cannot have the higher level thoughts about the game without having mastered the lower level.  If your game is turning on tactical blunders, then it means that you haven't mastered the lower level.  Your opponents can therefore use the lower level to get the win.  Which is itself strategic, since it's attacking your weak points to bring about the materiel advantage.  Or shows that you are not making the superior strategy, since you're leaving yourself open to your enemy taking advantage of your blunders and/or failing to take advantage of your enemy's blunders.