s

s

You have played only one game against a person and so it is difficult to know where you stand.

That one game had at least a couple of good moves, so you are on your way.

I don't know those particular lessons so I can't help you.

It does look like they have some endgame lessons aimed at beginners.

I personally think the chess.com lessons are next to useless, dated and time consuming. I haven’t gone thru  them all myself despite having a membership.

You joined a week early. Don't expect to learn chess by crash course. You need time to digest the lessons. Practice playing. Practice solving puzzles. Enjoy the game.

Chess takes time dude... literally takes months just to nail the very basics. I haven't ever watched the chess.com lessons but I love watching any beginner lessons from IM John Bartholemew or GM Daniel Naroditsky

Why do you think that? 

Between puzzles, tactics books, opening sequences, practicing classical games, playing guides. What do you feel are the most productive methods to practice chess basics?

Thank you for the recommendations! I will be taking those lessons today.

I am aware that chess takes years to learn but with the sudden difficulty spike in guides I worry I might be learning in a very ineffective way

Your profile says "Learning so I can beat my brother in about a month". So how good is your brother?

Get used to the pieces, how they move and can work together.  Start with a simple opening that allows you to bring your pieces out and control the center.  Then work on tactics while you understand basic plans - these are patterns that you can reuse.

Since we only play OTB it's hard to say, likely no higher than 1000 ELO.

As fun of an icebreaker for my profile it is to want to crush him after very humiliating defeats I also find chess very interesting and simply hope to learn more about. 

I don't plan to stop playing chess after beating him OTB.

Thank you for the tips, I am flirting with the idea of re-doing the guides on getting used to your pieces to see if they come more natural to me after my puzzling and other lessons.

Play a game, analyse the game after, do a few puzzles, whatch some youtube content like Naroditskys speedruns. Repeat. This is what find is the most usefull in getting better at chess. 

I don't think any puzzles are 'beyond your mental capacity'. Chess is really just pattern recognition. For example, I remember playing a higher rated player in a mall and he showed me a queen sac line which I saw in the game 4 moves out. He actually saw it 8 moves out. The reason or the difference in our level is he's seen the pattern much more than I have. Sure, to some extent--few may be able to spot obscure patterns off the first try more easily than most. However, i believe the more you familiarize yourself with common patterns the better you will become.

You are probably correct in saying that you wouldn't find the combinations if you stared at them for hours. But that's not the point. After you've tried your hardest to solve the problem, work your way SLOWLY through the solution and try to visualize how it worked. You are learning a new pattern. The next time you see a similar problem, you will have a clue how to solve it. Step by step, you build your mental library of patterns. In a while you will be easily solving the kind of problems that are baffling you now

Just a waste of time.

I was fortunate to work with a couple of high rated coach’s with similar taste and they were able to past me the blue print on improving and planning. 

I would say 80% of the stuff you read online, take with a large grain of salt.

most people on here are cheating   

impossible for these low levels to move so fast and accurately  

play for fun   dont care about rating   resign fast if they are playing like a GM at 700

I want to thank everyone for sharing their advice and tips!

I feel inspired and confident that I can improve with enough time bolstering my pattern recognition

There's a lot to learn. I resigned a game against a  bot a few days ago where I had King and Rook but bot had just a King. I  didn't know I could win with just a King and Rook. Then last night I was scrolling the videos under the Resources menu and there was a video on how to win in this situation.  The lessons are graded so jumping from How to Use the Pieces to End Games might be a bit too much of a leap.

You are not stupid, OP.  Please don’t think that.  You are doing well, much better than I am.

Very interesting observations.

Back when I played rated games, I beat people with a 1200 rating more than once.  It made no sense to me.  

I also lost games to players with very low ratings.  Every move they made was stone-cold perfect, and not a single move I made was not countered, perfectly.  I’ve never seen anything like it, and it blew my mind.  It was like trying to fight Mike Tyson in his prime.