Tactics vs planning

Lately I'm practising tactics a lot and managed to get my rating into around the 2050 zone which is decent in my opinion meaning i am not particularly weak in that area. However, my blitz rating stays low because I am looking for tactics in every position which instead calls for a strong plan.

Has anybody else faced this kind of dilemma. I knew a coach who suggested that the best way to improve your game is to go over entire games of masters. Maybe that's what I should do.

How did you improve in this area?

No one can definately tell you a tactical shot  position that you need to spend more time.Dont worry about missing tactics much. Better planning and better positional evaluation is more important than tactics, There are many ways you can win a game without doing tactics(taking risks). ( Even stockfish failed many tactical shots in tactical test suits).

With more experience, your decision about guessing tactical shots will be more and more acurate. It is called time management, where experience player will likely spend more time in more important positions.

If I play bullet, I usually decide in 3 tactical shots per game, average about 10 secs per move. In positional pushes moves, I spend half sec per move or 1 sec per move.

I read "Pawn Power in Chess" by Kmoch.

Among many other key points, it goes over the typical plans associated with each type of Pawn structure, and gives dozens of selected illustrative games for each of the typical formations.

Cool. Thanks for the advices @drmrboss and @Blueemu. Very helpful.

I hvae played enough Classical FIDE rated otb to know that i'll never be good at that and i am not at an age where i can spare enough time for it. so basically yeah ,, 5 min rules!

The current trend in chess thinking is to avoid the word "plan" entirely. GM Jan Gustafson has said there's no such thing as a plan during a game.

Concrete analysis is all there is. Plans are how you describe your win afterwards!

While planning is anathema to modern players, structure still matters, and targeting weak points still wins games. So it is possible to discuss strategy and tactics. But planning has been replaced by concrete analysis.

It's good to see that a U1000 USCF rated player defines chess terms more accurately than GMs. Grischuk, Svidler and Giri all agreed with the poor GM who is busy seconding Carlsen today.

Yeah, the chess24 feed of the World Championship match.  I think they mentioned it during game 10. Also, Jan has mentioned this several times in conversation with Svidler during their live commentary. 

The commentary has been archived on youtube. 

Jan's point is that middlegame plans are artificial constructs that occur after the game to describe the concrete analysis that is done during a game. 

Grischuk and Svidler agreed. If you watched the commentary, you know that they weren't just spouting off. They considered it and had a lengthy discussion. And yes, Judgement and Planning in Chess is still one of my favorite chess books (one of many favorites). 

IMO they still have a plan that they are trying to achieve or you can’t evaluate a position. The analysis of the concrete position is the enabler to the strategy but they definitely have a plan or they would be lost in analysing variations.

When I was ~1600 I read an endgame book and a pawn structure book over the time period of a few months. I really studied them, playing over every line of analysis, taking notes, etc.

This improved my strategic ability from practically zero to way above my 1600 peers. Probably 1800 or 2000 lol.

You mention playing over master games. That is also very useful, but you can't expect the ideas to just be obvious, you have to work with the games a little... and it helps to have some knowledge (like pawns and endgames) before you start looking at a lot of GM games.

We need to define the terms a little bit I think.

These are mine:

tactics: short term forcing moves
positional: shot term non-forcing improvement moves
strategy: long term considerations (like structure)

I guess I'd say a plan has to take both long and short term things into consideration. It's possible the word "plan" is unnecessary or even redundant, but long term elements and ideas that tie groups of moves together are still important. A rose by any other name...

Tactics are born out of good positions, so improve your positional play. With the side debate about plans, plans are long term ideas for improving your position, giving you some aim and direction. For. example, exectung a minority attack may be a plan in the position, but u need to develop and castle first. You should keep in mind your plan so you develop pieces to support the idea

Improve is a relative term...but Ive always been interested in strategy first. People play what they want to play, so improvement comes when you play something else until its part of your routine play.

Strategy is the largest coordination of pieces for the purpose of progression....defense or endgames with a lot of pieces left on the board are good starter training material. Mostly at 1500-2200 whomever gets there first usually wins so until you can disrupt that, strategy skills are too low. But if you cant get there first and cause winning evals, then the skills are critically low.

5 mins and less games, there is no improvement in strategy. None. It is that simple.

Very true. Even in endgames the skill level is very weak. Its amazing how many people I play against in this rating range lose symmetrical endgames

Really???  Wow.  That's really quite surprising, and counterintuitive.   That's either a ?! comment or a !? comment... I just don't know which.

Anyways, let me just repeat something that I think originated with Botvinnik:  When it's your time to move, think tactics (concrete variations), and when it's on your opponent's clock that's running, think in terms of plans or strategic ideas.

I think the point that the top players make, and it's also true at lower levels, is that any time you start thinking in terms of grand plans, your opponent does something to ruin it and you have to start all over again. 

After you've won the game, you can describe your grand plan because it's the one that your opponent let you have.

Ok, but I don't think any GM will pretend that a single overarching strategic idea ran though the whole game. It's more like after ____ structure happened, ____ are the elements in play. And if that changes later, so do the ideas. Part of what makes chess so interesting (to me) is the idea of currency exchange (so to speak). Players are always trying to get the best value for their trumps before changing to the next phase. And by phase I don't even mean opening, middlegame, endgame, but practically every time a piece is exchanged or pawn moves I think of that as a small phase.

Anyway, my point being that long term ideas definitely exist, it's just that through the course of a game the players barter and exchange for new ones a few times before the end of the game... but sometimes, especially when one player is outplayed, there can be a single strategic idea that sums up the whole game.

A game of chess is a dialectic, not a monologue.