I'm U2000 and I Don't Think I'm Really Playing Chess

I know that positional chess and tactical chess are both important and you need both to win a game. But I also believe that they must be separated because tactics can achieve the game's preferred end state, which is checkmate, while positional play does not. Positional play can lead you there and gets you those tactical chances but it can never win by itself. Tactics on the other hand can end a game immediately and often for no other reason than the fact that two pieces are attacking something that is defended only once.

What I have read from professional players, and have seen for myself, is that most games are decided by blunders. And these blunders come from tactical oversights or just weak tactical vision in general. Because of this tactics must be the most important subject for amateurs because they can simply end a game. But here is the rub: most people don't become 2000 rated and getting there isn't really a guarantee of tactical proficiency anyway. Even professional players do tactics puzzles.

So the way I see it chess for most people is a mostly tactical game until you reach 2000 and then when blunders are less frequent positional play starts to become relevant due to the fact that rogue tactical shots are not enough to win anymore or at least consistently. I am constantly reminded of this in my games and it's getting a bit tiresome. As someone who was told about all the strategy of chess, I feel a bit slighted that I may never really be able to actually participate in that. After all, who cares how often you can get positional advantages if you consistently blunder them away? Getting a positional advantage is not the win condition of chess, checkmate is and that requires tactics.

I just played a game recently and lost on time in this position with the Black pieces:

[FEN]r3k2r/1ppb1pp1/p1pb4/7p/3NP1nq/1P2P2P/PBP2PP1/RN1Q1RK1 b kq - 0 13[FEN]

I was so frustrated that I couldn't find a winning attack that I just sat there and stared at the board and if I couldn't find the correct continuation then I'd just take the loss. I felt that if I couldn't figure out how to play in this winning position then my play in other positions that weren't winning wouldn't mean anything at all. I didn't care about the result of the game anymore - I needed to find this move because if I didn't then maybe I was just wasting my time.

I like chess but it seems to me that if the tactics aren't on point all the other stuff doesn't matter at all and you're just not going to be able to see the game for what it really is.

Keep in mind that well thought-out positions make it easier for you and harder for your opponent to find good moves. It's not that you can't draw anything from strategical advantages until you reach a certain point. Sure, creating a weaker isolated pawn for your opponent doesnt mean a lot of you're up (or down) a knight, so you definitely got a point there.

just keep playing and keep in mind that with every game you get better, with every game you're banking up a nice set of strategical wisdom for yourself, slowly but surely, which works for you without even thinking of it. merely stand up one more time than you fall to the ground, and eventually you'll have astonishing games where tactical mistakes are evened out by nearly invisible advantages built upon your personal strategical set-up.

Also, you play a lot of blitz. if you're looking to improve, I recommend switching to higher time controls for both tactics and strategy. beside that, the game you linked had no computer analysis (i just did one). You can draw a lot from analysing your games, and the computer often helps understanding (especially for tactics)

idk man, some people get stuck in some random distinction between "tactical" and "positional" play which hardly actually means anything.. good players play good moves.

as a wise man once said, a "positional player" that is bad at tactics is just a patzer.
some strong players might not like sharp positions, but make no mistake - that doesn't mean that they are bad at tactics. when the position gets complicated and they are forced to calculate, you can be totally sure that they will.
people like petrosian and karpov were also very strong tacticians!

@Rise
I know some players much stronger than me say the two should not be separated. But since a tactic can win a game immediately and positional play can't, they have to be separated. That's why people do tactics puzzles and not just, you know, good move puzzles? Do they even have trainers for moves that don't just win but give some kind of advantage?

And on patzers, this may be true but what can be said with the opposite? Patzers or not people that are great at tactics and poor at everything else will still have good success. And look at great players like Tal who played unsound things and won anyway against GMs. I'm sure his opponents knew something about tactics.

you're oversimplifying the issue. the point of a tactic doesn't have to be a game-ending attack - you can use a 2-move tactic to improve a piece or something. would that be "tactical" or "positional"? idk, i would just call it "good".
tactics puzzles are usually winning blowouts intended to train your pattern recognition. once you learn the pattern from the puzzle, it still has to happen in a real game AND you have to see it for it to count.

so, how do you go about applying your puzzle patterns in real games? winning tactics don't come out of nowhere - they come out of weaknesses that come either out of complications, positional outplaying or oversights (and of course you shouldn't count on oversights).
everyone has already had the experience of playing a stronger player and feeling that you didn't have a chance (and you really didn't).

if i had to divide players in two categories, they would be "sharp" (tend towards complications) and "dull" (tend to avoid complications).
so, "sharp" players actively try to complicate the position and raise the stakes to the point where any mistake is fatal, while "dull" players actively try to lower the stakes instead. of course, players may also be somewhere in between.

while there's some relation, this division is not necessarily about being "positional" or "tactical" - i think of these as traits that all strong players must have to some degree. playing strength comes from playing good moves.
strong "dull" players will still play beautiful winning combinations if they're there, and they will still calculate if the position demands them to.
strong "sharp" players will still play their pieces to good squares while restricting the opponent when the position allows it, because it's just the right thing to do.

Here's some related stuff. I can only repeat #4:

lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/tactical-and-positional-chess#1

For example, Tal was really good at positional chess and Iron Petrosian brilliant at tactics. You can distinguish artificially but it leads you nowhere. All that matters is good moves (RJF).

@Rise But they can come out of nowhere. Take Shirov's Bh3 for example. Would you see that move? I wouldn't and his opponent sure didn't either. And regardless of the positional merits, it was backed up by insane calculation meaning that even if he saw the idea, it wouldn't matter if he hadn't calculated a bunch of really long lines. Tactics don't have to win games no. But they can and predominately do U2000. Even Magnus Carlsen has said this.

I feel you are looking at chess at the highest level which is what so many people I've heard actually do. They talk about how the best players play and what they do and how you could never just attack them with some unsound attack and win. But I'm not talking about professional chess or chess played in the best way. I'm talking about amateur chess here.

Yes tactics come from good positions. But they also come from bad ones. If you are up 10 queens, your opponent only has K+R and you move your rook off the backrank and get mated can we say that the opponent played well to achieve this tactical opportunity or that his position was good? Of course not! And yet, even at GM level players in bad positions will sometimes murky the water just to confuse the opponent. Perhaps good moves don't always come so easy.

At class level people blunder and that's where tactical opportunities come from. You don't always need to outplay your opponent if they just hang things. And that's common U2000. This is why I believe tactics to be more important. Of course Mr.GM is not going to beat other GMs by just throwing pieces at other GMs. But they play good moves all the time. Amateurs just don't.

You have to force your opponent to blunder. Just waiting for blunders to exploit them won't work. You cannot extrapolate noob chess to grandmaster chess.

@Sarg0n Oh no I don't wait for blunders at all. Either me or my opponent makes one and that's all she wrote really. I really do try to play good moves in chess. It's just that often my moves aren't as good as I thought.

Also I've seen one of Dvoretsky's books on tactics and needless to say, it was well over my head.