Ratings

Of course tactics are important. I was commenting on the often repeated statement that chess is 90% tactics. My observation has been that even at 1500 tactics and tactical opportunities were becoming less important as a deciding factor in games although obviously they do occur. I would assume this decline in the importance of tactics continues as u go higher in the ratings. Aren't tactics just the exploitation of errors that occur much less frequently as rating improves? There are some 2000+ players here, would you agree or am I completely off the mark? Is chess at 2200 only 5% tactics? I'm only talking about long time control OTB games BTW.

Usually people are biased by their rating. They will say "to be [speakers rating -100] all you need is tacitcs"

The strongest person I've heard say this is... Carlsen. A few years ago he said So was pretty good, but wasn't elite yet because all he knew was tactics and opening theory. According to Carlsen that's enough to be 2700, but not enough to be in the top 10.

I've also heard GMs say it. One 2650 guy said you can get to 2600 with just tactics, but to be rated as high as he was (2650) you needed to learn a little bit about strategy too.

Basically biased BS... but to answer your question if chess at 2200 is only 5% tactics, I'll say: lol

But no, it's not 90% or any % I'd say. In a real game, tactics and strategy are (nearly) always intertwined. You rarely make a move based totally off of tactics, or totally not on tactics at all.

Ok, so maybe that's your question. How often is it a 100% tactical decision that immediately wins material (or the game). Sure, maybe that's 5%.

He gave evidence for his point of view by saying that his son had a 1900 tactics trainer rating but was unable to use that to advance his otb rating. He was implying that tactical ability itself is not that useful after advancing past a beginner rating.

IIRC he said the kid is 1500 OTB?

1900 TT and 1500 OTB sounds right though. TT is hugely inflated.

1. The usual quote is, " chess is 99% tactics."

2. Richard Teichmann is credited with the expression, presumably he was talking about master games.

3. The best source for the quote comes from a secondary source. See http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/strategytactics.html

Not quite. The point was that tactical opportunities were becoming rather uncommon even at this fairly low level of play. Those tactics that we've spent hours practicing on tactics trainers just don't seem to materialize very often in games. Games r run through a deep analysis using an engine so I know the tactics aren't missed.  Players struggle to improve their tactical ability, for example he's at 1900 in both TT and chess tempo (I know both grossly overrated) but is that effort really worth it? 

You are likely right since I didn't go back to read your precise wording so you might not have explicitly said that tactical ability is unimportant at higher rating levels. However, if you say that tactical situations don't arise in that many games and that tactics training might not be worth the effort, then I feel that you are implying that tactical ability is not that important. That was where I had a disagreement with you.

Have you guys even looked at any recent GM games? There are tactics everywhere. They don't get played, though, so much as prevented. Tactical threats are the way top GMs achieve their positional aims.

You know beneficial tactics won't appear out of nowhere that often during a game unless an opponent is a beginner and simply makes a careless blunder. The tactics should appear after you put pressure on an opponent, likely either by having better piece activity or by having an attack on the king. I believe the problem you are having is due to the fact that your son does not have the positional sense needed to put more advanced opponents into difficult situations where they are more likely to make mistakes. He needs to have a basic sense of how pawns and pieces should be moved to gain an initiative or restrict the opponent.

Absolutely. I tried saying something to that effect but didn't word it quite so well

My fide otb is 1779 and my blitz here is only around 1450. Though admittedly I can hardly focus when playing online and I am much better at longer games.

Actually there isn't a problem, my son's playing level is his playing level. It only came up after I had mentioned that most games against similarly rated players turned into a grinding game with a series of inaccuracies deciding the outcome and not these great tactics. Reasoning that even low level players are aware of most tactical motifs, can calculate more or less & so avoid those kinds of glaring errors. This led me to question the value of spending time on tactics trainer once a certain level has been reached. Others disagreed and felt that tactics were the deciding factors in most games even at much higher levels.

But I tend to agree with you. Most players when they write about studying chess it seems a disproportionate amount of time is spent on tactical training thru TT, tempo, salt mine systems, board vis techniques etc. In reality that really only trains u to recognize tactics and after a certain point I would question how useful that is. Maybe more time should be spent on the strategic aspects of chess.

Solving tactic puzzles is something like playing the scales on your musical instrument. A good warmup, and something serious players do practically every day... tactical skill is necessary, but not sufficient. You also have to learn about all other aspects of chess to play well.

But without tactics, you'll end up like backyard professor... full of strategic ideas, but you give away your pieces for free so none of it matters.

Well said.

This position I got in 3/0 blitz reminded me of the common mistake we talked about earlier. I wanted to add my personal advice, which is something that helped me a lot when I was around 1600, and that's to ask what the opponent's threat is with the intention of ignoring their move if there is no threat.

As GM Smirnov said in that video, what's your instinct as black here? Of course the first thing you look at is captures. cxd or Rxd6.

But on either capture you invite a white rook to d6 and otherwise are activating white's rook on the d file. No experienced player would do this as black.

What is white threatening? Well massive trades would be a losing endgame. Black's majority is healthy and far advanced while white's has a doubled pawn. Also black's bishop is better.

So you sort of block out white's two rooks, the d6 and c7 pawns, and black's d8 rook. Just ignore them to see if you can improve something else.

Now what should white do? In my game white lost quickly after dxc Rxd2 Rxd2 Kxc7 and white has lost the control of the d file as black is ready to play Rd6 activating the rook and threatening to enter the winning bishop endgame. Again it's a mistake to take.

And black has good winning chances.