[cven714]

Stuck in the mid 2100s. The main difference I see when I play 1800s, and most levels beneath that, is still tactics. A 1200 lets you fork their king and queen. An 1800 goes into a variation that lets you fork their king and queen 3 moves in.

I make the same kinds of mistakes, allow positional concessions or just straight-up blunder because I overlook tricks in the lines I thought were safe.

Building up that mental repertoire of tactical and positional patterns by solving puzzles and reviewing well played games is essential, no matter what level. It's like building a huge in-memory cache of correct answers so you quickly solve problems at the board.

[S4M]

Interesting, I am myself stuck in the mids 1900 (used to be 2000+), and I feel that my tactics are quite good but it's my positional understanding that keeps me under 2100.

[j_h_s]

My experience is that tactics is a spectrum. You can always improve your tactics, no matter who you are. There is no player who never makes tactical mistakes.

Whenever you feel like it's positional understanding that holds you back, that just means that your tactics are at a higher level than your positional understanding, so your opponents are less able to exploit tactical mistakes in the games you play. Once you improve your positional understanding, your rating will rise until you are facing opponents who are once again able to take advantage of you tactically.