Like whole calculating the position in my head I cannot think or more than 2-3 moves, I forget the position and and where the pieces were, it causes alot of frustration, like I have an intuition of a tactic and I cannot calculate if it will work or not and due to this frustration I play a wrong move, either I miss the tactic or or I play it and then lose material, how can I improve this?

Ok so I have read the books: develop pieces, link rooks, trade for higher material, done puzzles. Read Wollff, Nunn, “Bobby Fisher” teaches Chess, Heisman, joined Chess.com Diamond for a while but did not find it that helpful, played on chess.com for a while and got up to 181 for a while but always get smashed down to 100 again often because the bot often matches you with much higher rated players The forums on chess.com and chess.com are full of sarcastic no it all assholes so if you are that type don’t bother replying. I have deleted all the online chess apps as found it hard to find a beginner opponent over say a 30 min or hour to move game. They all seem to want to play blitz but that does not interest me at all. I want to improve but always run out of ideas in the beginning of the middle game. I tried modern openings and stuff but to no avail. You always get (particularly Indians) flying out their queen and all the stuff in the coaching books mean zilch. I might join an irl club or just quit as I am facing frustration and burnout. Not being arrogant but I am not stupid. I’m not a genius either but got by with hard work producing results (got a PhD, can play piano and guitar well) but Chess getting nowhere despite following the generic advice.

I've watched quite a few videos by masters and grandmasters where they explain how they think during a game, and I'm beginning to think some of these videos might give you the wrong idea about how strong players actually find moves.

What seems to happen is the strong player recognizes a pattern or opportunities for tactical combos very quickly, does some calculation, and only then explains the move in terms of some chess principle.

For example, they'll say something like "Developing our pieces is important, so let's develop this piece” only when they don't see a tactical pattern they recognize. Or, on the other hand, after they recognize a tactical pattern, they are like "It's important to look for weaknesses. This pawn is defended once, and I can attack it twice.” But right when he is saying that, I notice that in his army there are like two undefended pawns and his bishop is under defended too.

I feel the real trick is being able to see why in this particular position this weakness in the enemy pawn structure is one I should carefully look at it. And not something else. The player only starts talking about it after they've already noticed the tactical opportunity involving the pawn, so that's why the point it out.

Here's another example. Another video I saw was a player thinking for a few seconds, then explaining that you should always look for forks and that he saw a good combo based on the fork. He then made a preparatory move and then the second one that forked two pieces. But then his opponent immediately made a move that forked two of his pieces in return. The player said calmly that of course he had seen the opponent's fork, but had calculated that he would still come out a piece ahead. But he had not told the viewers that this is what he had done.

So in my view, after you learn the basic principles, you just play a lot of chess puzzles and chess games (with analysis) until you get to recognize patterns. So watching these videos is not very helpful because the question is often not what the principles are but when and how to apply them. It's inevitable that some of your pieces will be undefended in the middle of the game. That your king may not be fully protected. That you will not develop all your pieces robotically one after another. But if you have a good grasp of the position, after many hours of intentional practice, you will have a feeling what candidate moves are. You can then explain them however you want, in terms of whatever principle, but it's really just recognizing patterns.

So I would think time is better spent doing puzzles and analyzing your games than watching speedruns and whatever.

This is just my experience and I understand some people find these videos helpful or at least entertaining. After all, "competency porn" is attractive.

Have social anxiety and really struggle with things like this but it was great.

I'm currently sitting at around 1300, a 1700 put me in a blender. He just seemed to control every square and didn't get destroyed but at the same time I never felt like I had a chance.

Any tips would be great, I will keep going but need to up my game. Thank you so much!

P.s. started chess around 2 years ago, only really learn from the likes of youtube videos (gotham) etc - feel like it can't take me any further

I play online quite a bit. 1150 on chess.com. Going to my first tournament on Saturday. I'm playing as U/900. I mostly play 1. e4 2. Bc4 as white and 1... g6 2...Bg7 as black. Are there openings I could look into real quick to improve my chances? Any traps I should look out for?

Any tips for a first time tournament goer? Common courtesy? (I'm an Adult American man if that matters)

Cheers