tactics question

yes its very interesting indeed, thankyou for your comment.  It appears to me that tactics are used primarily as a way of subjecting an idea to falsification rather than an end in themselves (this symbiotic relationship between tactics and position alluded to earlier by out friends), we have an idea and use tactics to verify whether it will work.

but this is the premise that i wish to test, the relative tactical complexity and it needs to be viewed in isolation, there is no point in clouding the matter with positional concepts at present for we are merely interested in the relative complexity of the variations.  I have read Micheal Steans wonderful book but that is something else, here I am trying to demonstrate that there exists a disparity in complexity of the tactics of actual games in comparison to those we meet doing tactical exercises.

Sure then, I'd agree. The tactical exercises we do are def harder than the ones that show up in our games. For the reasons given I gave above. 

But then again, I'll also argue that the endgame positions I study, the positional chess positions I study, and basically everything I study, is harder than what I actually encounter on the board in my play or play myself. Or else I wouldn't be studying it!

I still get the sense you're trying to reduce chess ability to tactical calculational ability, which just isn't going to work. The ones who say chess is 'all tactics' are completely ignoring or understating their nontactical understanding of chess.

No not at all I am not reducing chess ability to mere tactical prowess and I have stated over and over again that there is a symbiotic relationship between tactics and positional play and chess is made up of two components strategy and tactics, this is understood.  However I dare to say that there is a direct correlation between ones over all chess strength and ones tactical strength, but that is another subject.  It appears to me that we are training with 2000Kgs when we only ever meet 200Kgs on the board.  I could be absolutely wrong, I don't know, but I want to find out.

Well, for sure it's true that most players in the class level, while they make tons of tactical blunders, more often than not the reason for their blunders are because they don't understand the position, and thus are pressured into positions where it's really easy to go wrong tactically. 

I actually think most players 1200-1800 would benefit from introducing more positional type chess study in lieu of the tactics-dominant study that's the norm. They'll look at their game, see that they hung a rook, and conclude "I need to study more tactics!", and not realize that the real reason they hung their rook is because they were so cramped in space, with so few options to survive, that it was actually very easy to hang the rook, and that they should never have even allowed that position to occur in the first place.

For sure, I'm not winning games a lot more easily at 1500 (5-min blitz chess.com rating) vs my 1300 self because I'm blowing people away with deeper tactics. Definitely not.

So I'd agree with you in that people probably overstudy their tactics, and have exaggerated expectations of what that tactical study will do for them, and should probably balance their study and learning out with non tactical considerations. 

And it's not just me - I'm sure you've watched John bartholomew of Chessnetwork - I haven't come across a single tactical shot in any of their games/videos that I found mindbendingly difficult, unlike the ones I commonly run into at my level on chesstempo. These masters find the tactics much faster (instantly usually) and more accurately than I would, but even when playing 2200+ level opposition, they're not winning by some crazy Nakamura 7-move combo - it's almost all 2-4 movers that even 1200s can easily understand.

Yea people before me explained that much better like post #22

Good moves are often good looking. This is not the difficulty of chess... the difficulty is that during a game, bad moves are also good looking

I don't know about detrimental, but a game is definitely it's own thing. Tactics, strategy, practical play, time management... it all has to come together, it really is a performance and of course knowledge and even isolated skills =/= performance. You have to practice applying these things in real games. As you pointed out you can apply it incorrectly such as only looking for tactics. Even harder to notice... maybe you're looking for tactics too often, or calculating too much instead of trusting general logic to cut lines short.

When I took some time off of tournament chess and came back, I found the performance aspect to be difficult.

jengaias said it best. The point of studying tactics is that when you can recognize the patterns a mile away then you'll also be able to set them up.

There's a limit to how deeply we can calculate a position within a given time and effort investment. If you have familiar pattern and you know that a certain arrangment of pieces is winning, then you have to calculate a sequence only until the tactic appears, not until the end.

So you have much more chance to see it from far away and do moves to set it up, or you're allowed to do moves that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

I watch a lot of blitz play videos and tactics, or the possibility of tactics, happen all the time.

Ok, but it doesn't answer the OP which is asking whether very complicated puzzles help this ability or whether the ability to solve very difficult tactics are even necessary to playing a high level game.

Actually, I'm finding that studying positional middlegame setups is a better exercise for calculation than even tactics.

It's just false that you only calculate during tactical positions like ones from a tactics trainer. In most positional setups, you have to accurately calculate 3-7 move sequences to achieve a better position, while sidestepping all the tactical complications. It's harder, more realistic, and better for calculational training than just solving 'win a piece or pawn' problems you see in tactics trainers. 

Right know one of the books I'm studying and liking is "Improve your Chess Pattern Recognition." All middlegame positions, with themes like "octopus N" etc. While it's clearly a book aimed to teach positional chess, and not focus on tactics, I'm pretty certain I get better tactical practice and ability by playing through those complex middlegames he presents and seeing Stockfish smack down my weak responses with tactical refutations.