Uberdude, play nicely, let's not start this thread with antagonism

I think I'm going to add "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything" into my signature

On topic: An extension of your argument would suggest that tsumego are fundamentally strategic problem. On one level, the strategy is to live, or kill, or whatever the problem calls for. On the next level the strategy is to "find the key shape point", "remove eyespace" or "stay ahead of the semiai by one liberty". In either case (strategy synonymous with goal, or strategy synonymous with "the over-arching method of reaching the goal"), I don't think the term strategy is particularly useful - I also think it's not the definition most people use when referring to strategic concepts in Go.

There are people, eye jabbers, who try to kill every group by removing eye space, it can be an over arching strategy, but maybe not a very good one that beginners over use. I generally think of tsuemgo as part of a broader strategy with contingencies.

(with the possible exception of Tygem )

I was going to say... There are certainly places you can go to play where the prevalent style seems to be one of fighting anywhere and everywhere possible, without much greater strategic emphasis than that, for a significant range of levels.

In someways the traditional fighting style reminds me of bluegrass, they improvise alot they emphasize spontaneity, but darn if it doesn't all seem the same, and if you play an opening that isn't on the hoshi or in key and perfectly tuned they look at you funny

I think I'm going to add "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything" into my signature

That being said in any one of these strategies, only a small set of tsumego/tesuji will occur, they may be different, for each but only a small set will occur.

strategy without tactics is 20kyu at best, tactics without strategy is Tygem 7dan

I don't think you'll find a single dan player that agrees with the sentence I quoted from you. Go is a very diverse game, and even if you stick to one strategy AND your opponent always lets you use it, you will still run into tesuji and tsumego positions of all shapes and forms. Furthermore, I have a feeling you may be missing half the point of tsumego. It's not just about having a large repetoire of shapes that you know the exact answer to, it's also about honing your general intuition of good moves and about improving your overall reading ability.

P.S. I hope this doesn't come across as unfriendly; I've spent a fair few minutes trying to edit this to both say what I want and not come across the wrong way.

That being said in any one of these strategies, only a small set of tsumego/tesuji will occur, they may be different, for each but only a small set will occur.

"Is it possible to play Go without strategy?" Yes, by playing legal random moves.

The more interesting question, of course, is: "Is it possible to play strong Go without strategy?" Apart from the variety of possible definitions of "strategy" and apart from subconscious replacements for strategy, the answer is: No. It is "No." because strategy-free tactics is simply computationally too complex for decision-making. At the very least, one needs low-level strategy (or related subconscious thinking) for filtering "obviously" uninteresting moves quickly, using a strategy like "First identify and throw away all uninteresting moves, then use tactics and the like for only the interesting moves."

It's actually not like that at all: nonstandard openings are not uncommon on Tygem, and if you play weird stuff in turn, they won't blink twice.

Random is a strategy, perhaps not a very good one, involving no reading and lots of tenuki, and who is to say that under certain high miai games players at many levels confronted with equally good choices don't choose randomly or unpredictably in that context. Pure randomness is simply an extreme extension of that concept.

At this point you're probably going to need to decide on what you consider as strategy...If you are going to say that any set of board plays and passing qualifies as a "strategy", then the original question is a bit silly. Obviously you have to have something classified as a "strategy" if everything is a strategy (even random combinations of board plays and passes). Similarly you will never have to worry about finding a True Scotsman. If you are more interested in "does there need to be a full board plan for coordinating your moves," then I think it's safe to say that yes, a player can play without having a strategy, however that is unlikely to be the strongest course of action. I think the cases that might be most interesting would either be a blitz or large simuls, where you have a strong player who might not have the chance to develop a full board plan for coordinating moves, and instead relies upon exploiting local weaknesses or obvious errors to accumulate an advantage.

Strategy is a way to consider something less than simply every possible combination of legal moves while deciding how to play the next move, in this case a random strategy considers no moves.