How Do you play against people who just create a closed position and pawnstorm you?

Well, players across the board are also significantly better at tactics due to puzzle trainers.

This tactic with pressuring the long diagonal specifically is something that would have been rare from unrated players a decade ago unless they were booked up on the grunfeld and Catalan(which did not include low class level players)

It may or may not be OPs original intent, but I believe the proper sentiment is that it’s scary how much work is going in to just reaching 1100s. Before to get to 1100 you just needed to know some basics and not fall for fried liver or Blackburne schilling style traps. At the club level I know quite a few people that came back and are playing leagues better than they ever did decades ago as kids but still dropped to their USCF floors.

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