How to play closed games as a tactical player?

Currently I only study tactics and feel I am getting proficient at playing open games. However when it comes to playing closed games I often lose due to trying to open it up with sacrifices. This is because closed games seem really boring and dull.

These are two closed games I played:

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=881226591 

http://www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=881184489

Can someone give me an idea on how to play closed games well?

Sorry but I think you completely missunterstood the defination of "closed" and "opened" position. Both games you played were opened but the type of position wasn't the reason for your losses but blunders. 

Closed means that most of the pawns aren't able to push anymore because thy are blocated but this wasn't the case. Expect of this fact you have to learn to play closed positions (if you get one sometime ;) ) because to become a good chess player belong two things. First, good tactical skills and second, a deep positional understanding of chess, the true art of this game. As long as you neglect this second important point of chess you won't be able to make real progress.

+1

Neither one of these games represent a closed position.  Typically when the center becomes closed, play for both sides occurs on the wings.  

This is the true definition of closed:

And that specific closed game is extremely tactical, as are many others.

Never said it wasn't - just said it's closed, which the two examples given in the OP aren't closed.

Not all open games are tactical either.  Many of them are extremely solid and/or positional.  Take the Berlin, for example.

What you need is not a secret recipe. If you want to improve, you must play a lot of long games (with long time controls, not necesarrily 80+ moves), and then analyse them afterwards, to find out what to do when there is nothing to do.

I have started reading Seirawan's Winning Chess Strategies to understand more about positional chess. And just while I was reading it, it occured to me that those games were drawn games (I think), not closed games. Anyway, now I understand that I can't rely purely on tactics, which is what I was relying on.    

I don't know why, but most chessplayers far underestimate their positional skill. Positional skill at the GM level takes some creativity, but at my level, it's 

1. My knight looks good on d5!
2. Play Nd5
3. My opponent's bishop is good
4. Trade opponent's bishop
5. Move rook to active position (open file) etc.

youre 1200.

theres no such thing as a tactically oriented or positionally oriented player until youre 2000+

And I thought it was that you couldn't reach 2000+ unless you were both tactically and positionally oriented...

Thanks, but isn't 15|30 quite long time controls

I hear a lot of players saying this, and similarly "Below master level there is no such thing as a playing style, only weaknesses". But I don't think it's fair to say lower rated players like us don't have a style - take a low rated player who's played thousands of blitz games but has never read a chess book or 'studied' chess at all. The way they play is going to be noticeably different from someone (of equal rating) who plays a few slow games every now and again and spends the rest of their time studying, learning concepts etc. That's not to say both players won't make loads of mistakes, but the mistakes will tend to be in different parts of the game.

For example, I'd suggest the 1st player is less likely to blunder material to a tactic but is more likely to lose due to relying on traps, unsound sacrifices, lack of endgame technique etc. While the 2nd player might be careful to make sure to try to apply all the concepts he's learned, but then hangs his queen to a fork and loses anyway.

Just my £0.02

Does anyone know any books which can improve my positional understanding? I would also like to work on more sophisticated combinations. Even better, would anyone be willing to teach me about positional chess?  

Question 1) Pawn Power in Chess, by Kmoch. Pawn Structure Chess, by Soltis. My System, by Nimzovich

Question 2) Join a group that includes a few middling-strong players who are willing to play unrated training games against lower-ranked players.

Genius, thanks for pointing out groups. Also, does chess mentor help with you're positional chess?

I've never used Chess Mentor, so I can't help you there.

This frustrates me to no end.  Neither of those games are closed games.

Youre another chess newbie that studies tactics, and think hes another Mihail Tal.  If all youre interested in is tactics, because strategy is "dull and boring" then expect this to continue to happen.  if you really want to improve your game, then you need to study the game competely, not just 1 part of it.  The fact that you have no idea how to study strategy, middle game planning, etc. is frightening. 

Sac Knights on the base of pawn chains. BOOM

I do know something about chess strategy. How do I improve my knowledge of it?