Finding strong moves vs. Avoiding mistakes

Which ability is more important in order to get a higher rating in chess, finding strong moves, or avoiding mistakes? Is it better to play normal moves without blundering, or find excellent moves and blunder?

Such questions lead you to nowhere.

In many situations you have to find only moves. A single bad move can nullify forty best moves before.

So what‘s the point?

All that matters is good moves. (RJF)

Avoiding blunders up to intermediate level (~1700 OTB), then finding better moves than your opponents.

Avoiding blunders is subset of making strong moves.

#1 I assume it varies by time control; for example, in ultrabullet games moving quickly might be more important than making good moves. But if you are interested in learning more about the game, I would recommend learning more than tactics.

@GentjanLici

"...finding strong moves, or avoiding mistakes..."

This is not an either/ proposition.

Avoiding a mistake is often a strong move.
Why would you see it differently?

Agree with @hicetnunc - up to a certain level, you win games by playing okayish moves, not blundering and wait for your opponent to make a big mistake. 'Okayish' means moves that are basically thematic or improve your position in obvious ways, like moving pieces to better squares, rooks to open files etc. I am also of the opinion that playing okayish moves and being alert to two-move tactics can take you to ~1700/1800 classical OTB.

Then beyond this you need to actively win the game, and try and look for moves that are non-obvious (i.e. hard to play in blitz) but strong - i.e. they only work because of a tactical line, or they create an apparent weakness (eg doubled isolated pawns) in exchange for an open file that is actually much stronger.

But you can't play the strong moves unless blunders no longer decide your games, because of the calculational precision needed to play the strong moves.

When I first started playing chess again, after many, many years away from the game, I fell into blitz as was my habit back in the day, never having been more than a casual player who played chess for social and entertainment purposes. But this time around, I was intent on improving so I had a look at some of my last games and couldn't believe how much the advantage varied from one move to the next. Then I did the same thing with a random sample of games on chess.com and was simply astonished at the ubiquitous nature of egregious mistakes and blunders well into 1600-1700. This obviously meant that cutting down on game-changing mistakes and blunders would give me a significant edge under a certain rating level. So, I switched to correspondence chess where time is no longer a factor and had achieved 2012 non-provisional highest-rating in no time at all. Now, the rating doesn't mean anything other than my play is superior to 80% of those using that particular site but reducing my ratio of mistakes and blunders per game had a significant and measurable impact. This was mostly as a function of using a pre-move checklist which became internalized rather quickly and served as my first analytical framework, by the way. As I am tactically very weak, my strategy was simply "not to blunder" and create "pawn structure weaknesses and head to a better endgame". This worked very well until I ran up against 2100-2200 players on the correspondence site I frequent. This last category of players constitues an unbreachable wall, at the moment. So, I am intensively analyzing my games and studying tactics in the hopes that I can make some headway in the coming year.

So, I think your question is very relevant if you fall under a certain rating level as once a player has a firm grasp on opening principles perhaps the hardest thing to do next is controlling the impulse to play the first move that comes to mind which I would wager lies at the heart of many blunders and mistakes. This is purely behavioural, not cognitive. It has nothing to do with developing a better understanding of game dynamics and everything to do with self-knowledge and replacing bad habits with productive ones. I also think trying to consistently find "better" moves rather than "best" moves is much more realistic for the improving player under a certain rating level which is completely at odds with a very common practice among lower-rated players to obsessively study "opening" books replete with multitudinous variations based on savant calculations and theory they simply are not equipped to understand yet.

@PixelatedParcel Like many, I'm very much fighting with blunders. So, if you'd like to, you might help us all by telling us about the content of you premove checklist.

My pre-move checklist is:
* If I play this move, what are my opponent's captures and checks?
* If I play this move, what is my opponent's long-term plan?