Bruce Pandolfini is rated about 2200 and hasn't played in U.S. tournament since 1991. What does that tell you? The top member of my club is rated about 2200. I asked him why doesn't he write a book and he laughs (although he does tutor). That is not to say you have to be a great player to be a great teacher. You may be a great player and a lousy teacher. But at the upper levels of chess, the very competitive individuals rely on intuition, experience, and grinding logic. And one more thing: they are not dismissive of possibilities that look bad on their face. This is where I have to disagree with Mateulose a little. I'm replaying through Fischer's 60 Games. Repeatedly, I come across something like, "White was doubtlessly expecting..." or "This unexpected discovery jolts white" or "No doubt Tal expected..." showing that Fischer looked beyond the automatic moves that got his opponents into trouble. No, the "systems" are only tools to absorb and go on. They are not to be embraced as the religious truth or key to open the doors to chess success. If one does, I fear he won't get far in the rough and tumble of chess competition.
I think there are alot of authors who are emphasizing tactics over strategy these days (Wilson, Alberston, Chandler, DelaMaza to name a few). They recognize that the key difference between players at any level is tactical ability. So then the question is how to improve tactical ability in the most economical fashion. The best suggestion I have heard, and each of the above authors agrees, is to gring through lots of tactical puzzles until the positions are etched into your memory to facilitate "pattern recognition". Unfortunately for me, this approach has only yielded short term gains in my playing ability. If I stop looking at positions for any amount of time, my new found "abilities" disappear. I wish I knew a better way to gain some long term increase in strength. Any suggestions.....????
The problems with studying tactics massively, is IMHO, a lot of the tactical exercises, the tactics are kinda setup and pretty obvious. For example, they show a position and tell you, "find a tactic", and in 90% of cases, tactics involve some sort of sacrefice, so you merely look at possible sacrefices, calculate, and voila, chances are you will find the tactic in less then a minute and repeat this process tactical exercises after exercises, then programs like CT-ART give you a whoping ELO of 2600. In actual chess games, there's nobody to point out, "hey, there's a winning sacrefice" and in 95% of moves/cases, in REAL games, sacrefices are simply losing material pointlessly and because of this frustration, seldom considered and this is the overall downfall of us average players.
Also, it seems to me, in most of those positions were winning sacrefices may be present, I'm sure the chess player did something to CREATE that situation. Just looking for tactics doesn't seem to be enough, as I painfully find out most of my games, you have to find quiet moves to possibly CREATE tactics several moves later. This is really hard on players such as myself, as no books, chess teachers, etc have really told me exactly how I can do this and train for it, they simply tell me to study tactical puzzles, which is useless, because I can never create these positions anyways.
I suppose, one "system" to improve a player, such as I, play, is to consider EVERY sacrefice for EVERY MOVE no matter how stupid these sacrefices may at first seem. In RHP that would take a lot of time and work considering how many simul games you play, but is somewhat possible, in OTB chess, with time controls, I don't see how doing this is very practical at all and probably just chews up your clock for nothing.
I agree with what you are saying here as well. Silman, Seirawan, and Averbach have written guidelines for when to look for a combination, but I don't really buy into their suggestions that much. As far as stronger players playing quiet moves to "set up" tactics, I agree 100%. I am currently involved in a couple games with a player who is clearly better than me. I played sensibly enough, but am about to lose an exchange in one of the games by doubling my rooks on an open file. Apparenlty my opponent allowed me to double so that he could trap the front rook and take it with a bishop. How was he able to see the trapping move? I don't know. But, clearly, his ability to create tactical possibilities is better than mine, and the result is that he is a stronger player. I really don't know how to develop the ability to "create" tactical positions and have my pieces seem to automatically (those quiet moves you mentioned) be on the most aggressive squares.
The way I see it is this: The greatest player on earth can only play with what he has on the board. The great thing about chess is that nothing is hidden in the present. Everything is visible. IN RHP as long as you're playing a reasonable number of games you have time to consider the future possibilities. So, it's simply a matter of if I do this, he does this or why did he shift that bishop to that square--all you have to do is notice the possiblities created by that bishop shift. The rest of the board remains static. I'm not trying to say it's easy. I AM saying the best players pick the best possibilities, all or most of the time. No great system involved. And if you screw up, you hit yourself on the head and think to yourself, "I'm never going to make that same mistake again." And you slowly get better because you don't give up even though it's beginning to seem like a job without pay.