Often stronger players advise to study tactics to improve play so I've tirelessly trained in tactics for many months and seen significant improvement in my tactics.
Unfortunately my chess hasn't seen any improvement and been stagnating for long periods of time. My tactics is generally 400-500 rating points higher then my chess rating.
I feel part of the problem is that I feel my position is generally atrocious and my pieces feel uncoordinated. From what I've heard positional chess is extremely difficult to learn and is only improved through playing.
Any advice?
I looked at one of your games. 15+15 classical rating from last Saturday. You did excellent in the opening and used tactical ideas to gain an advantage. However you allowed your opponent too much counterplay. From that one game I would say you should spend more time thinking about what your opponent is going to do and spend some time preventing counterplay. If you want examples I can provide them, but this is just a general opinion on one game. Another thing is during that game you spent almost no time thinking. At the end of the game you had 12 minutes left. You need to spend more time thinking.
I looked at your most recent 10 min game. Same pattern as mentioned above: good play in the opening. You got a strategically won position and then you began chasing some non-existing attack, giving up material for nothing. You should have played on the c-file exploiting his pawn weaknesses.
Advice: play no more blitz, only classical.
Study endgames. That is the way to understand strategy.
Well, even Jussupov and Dvoretzky say that good positional play is founded on small tactical details. You have to learn the interaction between the pieces. The name is not important.
And, chess is more practical skill than collecting knowledge. It'll take you a couple of years. You can't hurry chess!
Thanks for all the great advice! Chess insights agrees that my strongest part is my opening and my endgame could use a lot of work.
Unfortunately I prefer openings over endgames, since it's clear and defined . While endgames it seems that every position is different, and I have trouble finding a common theme.
The opening is to prepare the middle game.
The middle game is to prepare the endgame.
-Former world Champion Jose Capablanca.
Yes.
@Sarg0n is right. Let me also add extremely strong positional players like Karpov and Petrosian were absolutely spectacular to say the least with very simple and complex tactics. I can also include Capablanca in the mix as well as he was the master of the double attack or doing two things at once.
Endgames are fun. I really like them! Why? Well I do like openings too but there are more themes in endgames. Where as in the opening its revolving around three things 1. control the center 2. develop your army 3. get king to safety.
If you can master the endgame it will help the rest of your game as themes can be applied elsewhere. In endgames the concept of time/tempo/tempy comes up a lot and this can be your whole outlook on the game throughout.
