Coming across the theory of Steinitz from [0] has made me look at chess in a different manner: at most levels of play rather than it being tactics or strategy, it is more about avoiding mistakes and waiting, prolonging play till oponenent eventually makes a mistake. My experience in over board play has been in concurrence with that view, one plays carefully parrying the opponent's move, while waiting till they make an inevitable mistake, then one can quickly consolidate the advantage in materials, mostly by cancelling out many pieces and then end game can start, which can be somewhat easily learned compared to other parts of the game.
This is the text of the Theory from [0]:
At the beginning of the game the forces stand in equilibrium.
Correct play on both sides maintains this equilibrium and leads to a drawn game.
Therefore a player can win only as a consequence of an error made by the opponent. (There is no such thing as a winning move.)
As long as the equilibrium is maintained, an attack, however skilful, cannot succeed against correct defence. Such a defence will eventually necessitate the withdrawal and regrouping of the attacking pieces and te attacker will then inevitably suffer disadvantage.
Therefore a player should not attack until he already has an advantage, caused by the opponent's error, that justifies the decision to attack.
At the beginning of the game a player should not at once seek to attack. Instead, a player should seek to disturb the equilibrium in his favour by inducing the opponent to make an error - a preliminary before attacking.
When a sufficient advantage has been obtained, a player must attack or the advantage will be dissipated."
Any person(including world champ) makes lot of mistakes and that's why they get badly beat by computers. The thing to know is when the opponent made a mistake and knowing how to attack it to advantage(that is basically called tactic). I wouldn't recognize the mistake of players rated 500+ point above me but a GM could and would punish them.
Indeed. I once posed a question at chess.com, which attracted many comments answering the opposite of my hunch, but after lots of analysis of games I'm pretty sure I'm right:
Looking at the computer-calculated advantage score during a game (e.g. "white is at +1.0"), is it possible to make a move that increases your advantage?
My belief is that, no, as a human it is not possible (at least, virtually impossible) to make a move that increases your calculated advantage. Your advantage is the score calculated with the assumption you make no further mistakes. The best we can do as humans is to keep that score, or (more frequently) lower it.
The game is then won by whoever lowers their advantage the least over the course of the game.
What cemented this for me was watching AlphaZero play against Stockfish. AlphaZero was playing so far outside the realm of what Stockfish could do that it was the only game I ever saw where a player increased their score. Basically Stockfish would say "you made a bad move, you made a bad move, you made a ... wait a second, that's a great move! How did I not see what you were doing!?"
This is the text of the Theory from [0]:
At the beginning of the game the forces stand in equilibrium.
Correct play on both sides maintains this equilibrium and leads to a drawn game.
Therefore a player can win only as a consequence of an error made by the opponent. (There is no such thing as a winning move.)
As long as the equilibrium is maintained, an attack, however skilful, cannot succeed against correct defence. Such a defence will eventually necessitate the withdrawal and regrouping of the attacking pieces and te attacker will then inevitably suffer disadvantage.
Therefore a player should not attack until he already has an advantage, caused by the opponent's error, that justifies the decision to attack.
At the beginning of the game a player should not at once seek to attack. Instead, a player should seek to disturb the equilibrium in his favour by inducing the opponent to make an error - a preliminary before attacking.
When a sufficient advantage has been obtained, a player must attack or the advantage will be dissipated."
[0] http://exeterchessclub.org.uk/content/theory-steinitz