It is not "better" to learn one or the other. It is necessary to learn and master both if you wish to become stronger.
<1500 : 75% tactic
>2000 : 75 % strategy
Ideally you would want to practice both but you are entering the stage according to the rating that I saw for you where strategy is becoming more important than tactics but that does not mean you should forget about tactics all together.
Best of luck.
Watched a stream yday where a rook sac with perfect play would’ve promoted a pawn. Just that the titled player couldn’t calculate it even tho he recognized the underlying strategy. He sac‘d the wrong rook even completely losing the game. His opponent was very suspicious and decided rather quickly not to take it (also completely losing).
Both suspected the correct strat but had no idea about the tactical execution because the calculation was too deep.
A perfect example of how strategy can be useless or even harmful without the required tactics to back it up.
Tactics can always be helpful stand-alone whereas you require them to be able to pull off any kind of strategy at all.
Tactics are watchdogs of strategy. Without tactics, strategy is the longest way to victory. Without strategy , only tactics may easily lead you a beautiful defeat
Can a "too deep" calculation be called tactics? Could you please give a position, if possible. I am always curious about such human vs machine perspectives. (too deep seems to imply a future tree machine).
But that does not mean your take home is less valid. Perhaps closer to human prediction abilities would make a better case. Where one of the 2 could see the execution. I don't know, but I would like to think that strategy is actually a helper meant to palliate this human unavoidable calculation fog with depth.
We could be leaving the holes (where strategy can't even do that), to the machine tournaments or games. And then loosing control of what chess is, or even if the machine did start (or not) playing their in their own little sandbox of run-away sharp calculation and forgot some range of chess, because it did not involve such runaways "perfect" chess escapees (short-hand needs debate itself).
Opening a can of worms here. I'm not a master but I have beaten several playing 960, which is all about development of pieces and looking for tactics. Usually the most tactics are found in the endgame or middlegame.
Lets first define tactics,
In my humble opinion, tactics are an immediate advantage. Either winning material or the game. The best type of tactics are forcing moves and of forcing moves, double checks are the most forcing, then checks. Then a pin absolute, down to winning of a pawn.
Strategy is the plan. It is the overview and not immediate. You are dreaming of best case. You are setting up tactical shots and mating motifs.
So tactics are the most important by far.
Very sensible summary.
But for the last sentence, there is a "so" that seems an unopened can
(and the "by far", by far look-ahead? ;)) (double-chin, mine). joke.
not immediate and not made of same time chunks perhaps.... could there be a broader chess time (not human time) made of tactical patterns each behaving like dominos (for the linear view, analogies have limits....), each domino action being its own chess time chunk. could be talks sequence of patterns instead of moves? (opening the can?).
one goes with the other, i don`'t see your conclusion.
but i like the attempt at putting some ordering. and the degrees in using the word "absolute" pin. (implies there exist degree, otherwise the discrete mind would think pin or not pin).
@dboing Thanks for responding to my post, I often think my sensible summaries go unappreciated and ignored in favor of 13 year old's fart jokes.
Now, my use of the word, "so", is a little arrogant I agree and implies that's it. End of discussion.
However, "by far", just means by degrees of importance and I could have easily left it out, but I'm kind of wordy and can type fast.
Perhaps it would be less offensive and not so absolute to say...I think, tactics are probably, for the most part, generally speaking, for the average player, maybe more relevant to invest time in for study purposes.
About the ordering of importance to tactics, that was just flexing. You would notice under investigation of my profile that I spend a great deal of time and effort on tactics training and I'm approaching 2000 runs on Puzzle Storm and could reach it today except I'm about to go and do my pocket billiard drills at a friends barbershop. But on a bet I would gladly stay at home and reach 2000 runs if pushed even a little bit. I'll probably be out the door before anyone does that however.
I also used to create puzzles on a phone app that was public sourced and was quite obsessed with tactics for a few years and probably created over 300 puzzles , as well as making charts naming all the best known mating motifs.
The ordering comes from books like Predator At The Chessboard, that talks about forcing moves and the degrees. Also they make sense of words like, "deflection" or "decoy" and call it , "removing the guard".
When I do tactics, I have a checklist that I do in order.
Is there a forcing move? Usually this means a check, but also can mean, if they don't recapture they lose material.
Is there any loose pieces? So this is looking for a double attack.
Tactics is what happens when you are aware of these two questions.
Tactics in a nutshell are, The Double Attack and the Discovered Attack. The Pin and the Skewer. Removing the Guard and Mating Patterns. This is according to Ward Farnsworth.
As far as opening a can of worms, that is sort of an inside joke because my last name at birth is Cann. And by not being an officially recognized master I can't appeal to authority to sway people with my logic and thus leave myself open to others opinions. Now If I had a blue check next to my name, I don't really need anything else because I have pre-approved credibility.
And because of that it is up to you to decide if I'm full of it or on the money. The short answer is that I'm a bit of a chess nerd that likes to share useful information about a subject that interests me. It's nice to get noticed by people like you that make an effort to post something in response, but it's also unneeded and I do it for my own selfish pleasure and solipsism.
People actually care?
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