strategy

If your realy want to increase your chess,i advice to looking for 2 books: modern chess strategy and my system. Chess is 99% strategy and 1% tactics,if you have knowledge about strategy you will understand any move from the openings.

 Yes, strategy is important, and the more advanced you become the more important it becomes.  But tactics is the bedrock.  Untill you can keep your pieces safe, including seeing at least two and three move combinations, and find those combinations against your opponents, your games will swing on tactics, rather than some subtle positional issue.  I find that when I win it is becuase I have avoided tactical mistakes, and that when I loose it is generally due to a tactical error, not some subtle point like weak vs. strong minor peices or an inferior pawn structure. 

Another way to put it: strategy is important, but without solid tactics you can not make the strength of your strategy come into play. 

Thanks for the advise , i really want to improve my chess !

Anyone can take a superior position and lose because you missed elementary tactics. It's hard to lose to superior positional manuevering if you've got your eye on the tactical ball.

I would agree that strategy is the shit, but, unfortunately, it's not 99% of the game.

What is the best way to improve tactics and to avoid oversights.

 Do tactical drills and puzzles untill your eyes won't focus.  Use tactics trainer here on chess.com, or if you are a free membership I find chesstempo.com to be a usefull site.

I don't recommend this. You want to train your eyes and brain to recognize new tactical patterns and motifs. Overworking them isn't so good for learning. Do enough tactics problems each day that you are missing a handful of them. Go over the solutions to the ones you missed carefully. Understand why you miss the problems you miss and learn to recognize those motifs.

If you are adding a few tacitcal ideas to your brain every day, soon you will not be overlooking many at all.

Both comments sound like good advice. Can you recommend some websites or good books to practice tactics.

My conceptual problem with chess (and with music) is that it seems like their are only so many possible moves (and notes) so that play in both areas appears to me to be, of necessity, limited. I know that this is not true, however it is hard for me to conceptualize the unlimited nature of chess play (and music composition).

Any way to reconcile this for myself.

Thanks for the advice.

Cliff

Thank You.