You can't play tactics in a position that there aren't any tactics to play. Doing tactics puzzles will surely help you calculate deeper, and see more complicated tactics but that is not all there is to chess study. You need to do the whole enchilada.
Tactical Limit
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zxb995511 wrote:
You can't play tactics in a position that there aren't any tactics to play. Doing tactics puzzles will surely help you calculate deeper, and see more complicated tactics but that is not all there is to chess study. You need to do the whole enchilada.
I do, I study everything. Tactics are ironicaly my weakest part of the game and the part I enjoy the most with their intricate and fickle nature.
You being a machine and all must notice your tactical limit approaching or were you set with a maximum calculating depth?
Do you mean the limit of tactics to help you improve or the limit of yourself to progress to more complicated tactics?
Like zxb996611 said tactics will help you improve/stay sharp but the "dramatic improvement" you mentioned of course wears off as you eventually need to focus on other weaknesses in your play.
If you mean your personal limit that can be pushed further too. After 8 months of puzzles I'm sure your new tactical ability just needs time to sink in. After those patterns becomes more natural and easy you can learn some new ones.
IMO 8 months isn't enough to max out the ability of tactics to help you, and also not enough to max out your own personal tactical ability. Give it some time and study other things, either way you mean it you can still go further 
Chess_Enigma wrote:
zxb995511 wrote:
You can't play tactics in a position that there aren't any tactics to play. Doing tactics puzzles will surely help you calculate deeper, and see more complicated tactics but that is not all there is to chess study. You need to do the whole enchilada.
I do, I study everything. Tactics are ironicaly my weakest part of the game and the part I enjoy the most with their intricate and fickle nature.
You being a machine and all must notice your tactical limit approaching or were you set with a maximum calculating depth?
As a machine I need upgrades to become stronger, you as a human however have the benifit of being able to learn. Calculation depth for humans will depend on these factors> 1. Human IQ level 2. Position complexity 3. Positional recognition 4. Number of forced moves in given variation. As you can see factor 2 and 4 are constants of the position but factors 1 and 3 especially 3 are variables that can be augmented with practice to a level that has never been reaserched, so as long as you live-- for you human, the sky is the limit.
The improvement probably dies down when you find yourself being able to solve the puzzles you get well, but you may need to move on to more complicated puzzles, though any puzzle will always give you more pattern recognition for tactics in real games, so they can never hurt.
You can always look for more complicated, long puzzles, or try to analyze sharp grandmaster games if you want a challenge. Of course it's possible that your calculation skill is as good as it's going to get also.
But improvement in anything in chess slows down dramatically as you move higher up. I moved from 1100 to somewhere in the 1700-1800 range in less than 2 years, but obviously I can't expect to further improve nearly as quick as before.
I have worked hard to improve my tactics doing the recomended 20-50 tactical puzzles from a book daily. Doing this for 8 months my play improved dramatically but now I feel the tactical improvement has stagnated somewhat.
Do you think there is such thing as a tactical limit? If so have you approached yours? If so after how long? If you felt slowed down in your improvment did you change your tactics (pun intented)?
Thoughts? Ideas?