My own theory of chess

Which should be taken with a grain of salt because I'm a crappy player. My thought on the way to approach chess is that you need to learn a lot about tactics/attacking and learn a lot about the endgame (and I don't just mean how to win with a rook and pawn versus a rook, I mean late middlegame to endgame, when you still have like 7 pawns, a couple minor pieces, and a rook or two), and the rest of chess will follow from those considerations. The opening and middlegame (and your attacks) are all about maneuvering the position toward a better endgame, so the best way for a beginner to improve is to work hard on those two things, tactics and endgames. And, of course, the very important matter of the thinking process (cf Dan Heisman) and the problem of thinking about strategy in those specific terms.

Then again, when I took Khmelnitsky's chess exam a couple years ago (when I was last playing chess), I scored 2300 on "standard positions" (like, textbook endgame positions, Philidor, Lucena, etc), fairly high on endgames (I forget the exact score, at least 1800, less than 2300), and abysmal on strategy and middlegames (like, my two lowest scores, I think 1300-1400ish). Given my overall level (at that time, I tested at, like, a 1610 rating), I don't think you can conclude anything other than that I suck.