Should I Keep Doing Puzzles Or Something Else?

I'm a firm believer that Tactics, if not the bread, are at least the butter and filling of Chess. Since I began actively training puzzles I've managed to reach a puzzle rating of 2100-2300 (varies depending on the day, but never below 2100).

Despite this, my actual rapid rating sits at around 1250-1300.

Is this discrepancy in Puzzle vs. Live ratings normal, or is there another aspect of my game that I'm missing that's holding me back from climbing to higher ratings?

I struggle a bit with this as well, (just check my profile), but have been getting better gradually. The trick is to not turn on auto-pilot on while playing and act like every position might be a puzzle. Of course don't waste a lot of time and stuff but as long as you keep studying, doing puzzles, and playing you should get better. Usually studying middle-game plans on the openings you play help finding tactics of that opening more easily. (for example rook sacrifices in the London System for white on the kingside are common or a bishop sacrifice in the French for white as well. Hope this helped.

You can work on every aspect of the game... But always do tactics.

get at least 3000 puzzles;

try to take a lot of lessons here as well.

Cheers for the advice. I was mostly worried that my Live rating should be around where my Puzzles were, but the fact that such a large gap between them is normal is somewhat nice to know.

I can't see myself ever stopping with Puzzles, but I thought maybe my time could be spent learning other things.

the lessons are definitely beneficial.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check them out!

i've taken 1,000 of them.  👍

Check out this article by GM Avetik Grigoryan: 

The Myth About Chess Tactics and Solving Chess Puzzles

I agree that positional moves and strategy are still important. Where I said tactics are the butter and filling of Chess, I would say strategy is the bread.

#12
"tactics are the butter and filling of Chess, I would say strategy is the bread."
++ 'Chess is 99% tactics' - Teichmann
Engines destroy grandmasters with middle game tactics, not with strategy.

How much time do you use to solve a tactics puzzle? How much time do you use to play a move in a game? The time per move in a game should be more than the time to solve a tactics puzzle, as in a game nobody tells you there is a tactic, or for which side.

Like 4 tactics puzzles are a good warm-up, but tactics puzzles are not chess, like penalty kicks are not soccer.

"Something Else?" ++ Books spring to mind. 1 book per year is good.
However like you cannot learn to swim or to drive a car from a book, it is the same with chess.

The main thing: play games and analyse your lost games so as to learn from your mistakes.

For some reason the tactics ratings are generous. I think it is part of the website’s marketing strategy. If I am that good at tactics, maybe I need to watch more videos to bring my rating in line.

Puzzles can help develop your tactical vision and calculating abilities, but they don't directly help with positional understanding.

Chess is full of common positional concepts that one should try to learn, if you want to reach a certain level of play.

Some of these include:

- Playing with or against isolated pawns / backward pawns / doubled pawns / passed pawns

- Attacking with (or defending against) the minority attack

- Using tempo to improve your pawns / pieces

- Common kingside attacks (or kingside defenses) when players are castled opposite

- Playing with (or against) the bishop pair

- Known pawn structures and their thematic goals (like common breaks to aim for) (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_structure for a basic idea)

- Not to mention a plethora of opening theory and the thematic goals and ideas for each opening / defense.

I mean, the list can go on and on... Granted, you don't need to know this stuff, but the more of if you understand, the easier chess can get for you (and the harder it can get for your opponents).

When I was younger, the most common way to be introduced to these things was to read and study Nimzo's positional primer: My System.

But these days, there are many more books (and other resources) that will teach these same concepts, so you're spoiled for choice. And many of the resources today are more user-friendly than Nimzo was.

You just need to take the initiative to seek them out, and to study them. Then, little by little, things should start to fall into place. 

     Puzzle ratings are higher than competition ratings because you know that there is a quick tactical solution to the puzzle. If you take the time to figure it out you will get a plus score. If you waste a lot of time in a game trying to find a decisive move where none exists you will put yourself in time trouble and increase your chances of losing.

     Also, searching for an immediate tactical solution in every move in a game can lead you to ignore important positional aspects and drift into unfavorable positions. 

     If you really want to improve your game, learn basic endings.