STUDY END GAMES NOT TACTICS.

Anyone who tells inexperienced players to "just do tactics" to improve are morons. Anyone under 1000 to be specific. No, most games are not won by a tactics. It's won by position that create tactics. Don't blunder, study end games, learn positional concepts, < This is experience from my 3 years of playing chess on here. Do tactics, but don't spend a lot of time on them. Just warm up and get the basic concepts. I know I'm a low level player myself but I know my weaknesses.  You could get a coach, but that is limited when you don't know what you're doing even when they give you blunder check systems and puzzles ect. I left something at the bottom to help new players as well. Still, it's limited if you don't understand a position. 

1) What's my opponent threatening?

2) What he is weakening?

3) Candidate moves based on what we know from point 1 and 2. First forcing and attacking moves and if we don't have them, developing moves.

4) Blunder check. What I'm going to make weak or undefended. Can he exploit it somehow?

I 100% agree. I always found it frustrating when I would ask a stronger player how to improve, and they would just say puzzles/tactics. I got this level from studying positional play, endgame basics, and a slight amount of theory. Tactics can only get you so far, the game of chess has so many other factors.

ImTrashLOL_91, I don't think you're understanding what is meant by tactics. Chess thinking is divided into strategy and tactics. A lot of your suggestions apply to tactics and strategy. Note that forcing moves and attacking moves are tactics.

As for Sensei-T, there's no doubt that you need more than tactics to reach rating of 2000.

The only reasonable conclusion is that you don't remember the time when you were a beginner. Did you really study "positional play, endgame basics, and a slight amount of theory"? Really? Of course not.

The other problem many beginners have is they, like openings, try to memorize them when they should be understanding patterns.

For example, they will try to memorize a bunch of Lucena and Philidor positions when instead, they should be understanding the fundamentals of both.

WHY is Philidor's draw on the 6th rank and you only go to the first after the pawnn is pushed to that rank? Why not the 5th or 7th?

What is an important feature about Lucena's position vs Philidor's draw?

What is building a bridge? When do I do it?

Why don't rook pawns work?

This is how it has to be approached. Not just memorizing positions and lines. If you understand these fundamentals, you will have cases where say, you have R+4P vs R+3P where you see that if you cut the opposing king off (a fundamentally important factor in Lucena's Position), you see a way to get your king in and trade down to 1 on nothing as far as pawns go, and with the opposing king cut off, you can get the king and pawn to near promotion and then build the bridge.

But the moment you realized the opportunity at Lucena's position was back when your king was on g2 and you had 4-on'-3 on the kingside with the opportunity to cut the Black King off with say, Rc1! If Black trades Rooks, the win is easy. So instead of waiting until it gets down to 1 on 0 pawns, you already see the writing on the wall, and Lucena's position, while 25 moves away, is on the horizon!

While Lucena's position is far rarer than Philidor's Draw, and while I have gotten Lucena's 5 times over the board while having gotten Philidor's Draw a pawn down probably 30 to 40 times, it was hilarious once where I had Lucena's position in back to back rounds at a tournament in 2014, first with Black with a g-pawn in the 3rd round of a 5-rounder on a Saturday night, and a master that was watching noticed what I saw Sunday morning as White, R+3 vs R+2, Black King cut off by my rook, and low and behold, back to back games where I got Lucena's position, this time with a White f-pawn rather than a Black g-pawn, but otherwise, basically the exact same thing happened.

Moral of the story - when you study the endgames, it is not just about memorizing reams of lines. Once you fundamentally understand fundamentals, like Lucena's Position, Philidor's Draw, The Short Side Defense, The Long Side Defense, and the Vancura Position, you can expand those building blocks into critical positions in your game LEADING TO one of these positions, depending on whether you are the one with the extra pawn or the pawn deficit.

If a true beginner tries to study the Lucena or the Philidor position, his head will explode.

For a beginner, there are much more important and much-much simpler endgames. How to mate with 2 rooks? How to mate with 1 rook?

I agree with part of the OP's position. Novice chess players need to know the fundamentals of endgame play in addition to studying basic tactics. Failing to do so, throws away the rewards of studying tactics when a player, through good tactic play, reduces the game to a clearly won end game of pawns and minor pieces, only to draw or lose because of lack of endgame knowledge. I don't think low elo players need the depth of endgame expertise listed above, but likewise the claim that they should shelve most endgame study for later, and concentrate on tactics, is just wrong.

That's so true!

I improve neither tactics nor endgame, so dont worry about me

Or try to improve your board awareness (puzzles help with this until ~500 from what I've seen) so you don't blunder away pieces before the endgame. tactics are not always complex combinations, they can be as simple as 1 move checkmates or hanging pieces. however as you said, studying endgames is useful because you can start planning ahead of time what you want to do to get an advantage in the endgame (or how to convert winning positions such as the lucena as mentioned earlier/how to draw drawn positions like the philidor)

another thing is time management. as a beginner, make sure you aren't blitzing out moves in 2 seconds without thinking in a 10 minute game, and not to spend too long (maybe 5 minutes )on simple moves like only recaptures

i'd say doing tactical puzzles is definitely the best way for beginners to improve, I myself used them to get me to about 1600 so they work, but it's more to build board awareness (seeing what is hanging, what isn't, how things are changing when moves are made in calculation) and the habit of calculating lines (since it allows you to spot opponents' threats and tactics and avoid blundering them

at the end of the day, it's up to you to study and improve and figure out how you are going to do that, but I think puzzles shouldn't be ignored - but shouldn't be overvalued either

I am sure many beginners are doing similar things, just at different degrees of difficulty. You're saying these things as if you know what I did to grow at chess. And what do you mean I don't remember the time I was a beginner? Can you elaborate please?

It's completely impossible that a beginner "studies positional play". A beginner wouldn't even understand the concepts used there, let alone use them in a game. Anyone who does that is just wasting time for no reason.

I kind of agree on that first point.
'positional play' is much harder to teach than other aspects of play.
Lasker talks about that in his manual of chess.
But I would say the biggest stumbling block for beginners and novices and even more advanced players - is openings.
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Now - 'tactics' and 'endgames' aren't exclusive of each other.
They're intertwined. So are 'tactics' and 'positional play' too.
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Here's a simple example of basic tactics and basic endgames being intertwined.
White to play and win.

Black just played his K from g7 to f7.
Its white's move.
Uh oh! Black had to keep his King on g7or h7 only 'to be OK'.
He could 'bounce' between g7 and h7 - but only those two squares.
White: Rh8 !!
Black is doomed. The tactic is called 'the skewer trick'.

I do believe endgames are the way to go, and the reason Magnus is so above and beyond everyone else!

Yo Magpi. Help me out man. What should I do? I have been doing tactics out the wazoo. To the point I'm rated 2000. I'm even on Chessable doing end game tactics lessons. How many thousands of tactics should I solve before I'm better?

You call that a tactic? I solved that in like 15 seconds. There are multiple ways to deal with this. Even if black decides to not to take on A7 and chooses to attack my rook I can just promote my pawn and get a queen. Then if he takes the queen on A8 I'm now winning because I just take back with the rook. The skewer was very simple to find and I'm only rated 600. Yes you are correct black is doomed.

I don't understand how I'm still a beginner. The engine constantly says I play like a 1000-1400, but so do my opponents unless I get someone really bad. I have had 3 people coach me. Was told by one 2000+ rapid rated person that he was impressed with my openings, even though I use no opening theory. If tactics don't work, then what? Other than blunders? I follow every chess principle possible.

Look at my Puzzle ratings then get back to me. Yours is literally only 42.................. If your answer was true my rapid rating would be much higher. I play only 30 min games so time management is not an issue for me. I don't think I have have every played a single game of bullet or blitz. Shortest game I have played is 10 min rapid games.

Exactly this. I have been struggling for a while. I'm actually quite good at tactics. Where I fail is after the opening and I don't see any tactics to use. I'm clueless.