Looking for mentor

I have tried various games with lessons and such, but they don't seem to help (as can be seen by my rating). I also can not uprgrade to any memberships on this account to try Chess.com's metor tools. I am looking for a skilled player to help me improve, as other methods of learning have not worked. Thak you for your interest, even if you don't decide to help.

I can't really take the time to be a permanent mentor, but I can share some observations from my own experience as to getting over the plateaus in your improvement.

1.  Keep as many game scores as possible/reasonable and, if you have time, enter and annotate at least one or two per day (no fair cheating and only entering your wins!).  Annotate your thought process, especially when making mistakes.  Even at my level, I find certain errors I make do not travel alone, but come from flawed thinking processes or evaluations, and repeat themselves.  Use Rybka/Fritz only as a Blundercheck AFTER you have analyzed it with your own brain (yes you may move pieces).

2.  Don't marry your improvement process to mastery in one or two openings.  Chess is a holistic game and gaining understanding of the ending and strategy, as well as tactics will help you build a better instinct for playing against opening surprises.

3.  Tactics are important, but as Nimzovich said of Alekhine - (paraphrasing) Anyone (obviously referring to himself and his peers) can play Alekhine's combinations, but how does he get those positions?  Play through the tactics, but take note of the games from where they are played and play through the games to see how the victorious player developed the game into the position where the final tactic took place.

4.  If you have a club locally, or if you are at a tournament, politely ask stronger players for their opinions.  Sometimes, players with a title or a high rating seem like they are on another planet (and unfortunately, some are), but most are flattered and more than happy to take a few minutes to help those willing to learn.

I've mentored several players on other sites (one player went from 1300 to 1900 in a couple months). As it seems to me, I've always regretted the experience afterwards. It distincly feels like being "used" after they start beating me and then leave me in the dirt. I won't do it and can't do it. Hopefully you can find someone else to help you. Just please don't "use" the person.

Here's my "lesson of the day"... I call it "if it looks like a duck..."  If you look at my previous post, you will note the importance I put in looking at the game where the tactic puzzle came from.  In this case, I knew this rather crute game from Gibaud-Lizard, French Championship sometime, I think, in the 1920s...

My opponent, rated at one time over 2300, was apparently not aware, or at least not thinking about this theme.  I recognized similarities early and gave him the opportunity to self-destruct, but only in such a way that I would retain the normal White positional edge should he play any move that did not fall into the trap.

So, in summary - the lesson is to do more than study the tactics, find the source games and discover how the winner developed the weaknesses and set up the position where the tactic was possible.  In doing this, you will develop a pattern recognition skill in yourself to see the beginnings of a tactical opportunity, and not just to recognize the tactic, itself.