How do I go about learning chess theories?

I’d still consider myself a beginner (1000 chess.com) anytime I get into the “middle-game” I’m left clueless without a plan, which forces me to exchange material. what’s the best way for someone like me to get into learning theories without over complicating things? Where should I start and what should I focus on? Maybe there are books I can look into?

Generally speaking, at any given position you are always looking for tactics, so look for checks, captures, threats. For most players intermediate or below, a tactic (or missed tactic) is what is deciding most games. This is why drilling puzzles is one of the best things you can do to improve at chess below 2000. Puzzles not only helps with calculation but with pattern recognition too - so you can spot tactics that might be 'in the air' more quickly.

After tactics, the questions I am usually asking myself during the middlegame are (in no specific order):
Can I improve any of my pieces? (What's my worst placed piece, where could I move it to in order to make it better? eg. Rooks to open files, Bishops to open diagonals, etc).
The point is, tactics don't just "happen" out of nowhere, especially when your pieces are badly placed and not coordinated. You need your pieces on good squares, ideally working together and tactics will just flow.

"Are there any weaknesses I can target?" be it an isolated or backwards pawn I can start piling up pressure on, or another weakness like king safety or a weak colour complex I can exploit.

"What is my opponents plan?" Is there any prophylactic move I need to make to stop that plan?

I also like this one "If I had 3 moves in a row to make, what would I do?" - It helps you come up with a general idea or direction you want to play, then you assess whether the plan is any good or if your opponent can stop that plan. 

I've only ever read one book, and I've only read about 20% of it at that, but it was called "How to re-assess your chess" by IM Silman. It's aimed at 1400-ish and up but does cover middle game ideas. I'd recommend it.

However at the 1000-1200 level, Tactics and Endgames will be your two best friends.
Re Endgames, focus on Rook endgames and King & Pawn endgames primarily - you can branch onto minor piece endgames later. I say to focus on those two first as they tend to be most frequent.

lots of helpful resources for improving your chess in my chess.com blog, including good book recommendations...

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/good-chess-books-8

 I am by no means an expert. Started playing online for the first time in my life 3 weeks ago. Had never played vs real people previously. Just played occasionally against the windows AI and enjoyed watching chess channels.

 What seems to have been working great for me is just doing tons of chess puzzles on chesstempo. Started doing that a little over a month ago. Hundreds and hundreds of puzzles. Easy difficulty blitz mode, figured better to do loads of easy puzzles to learn general patterns rather than complex ones.  Also like I wrote I used to watch chess as entertainment on Youtube. My thoughts are that 90% of Youtube watching has been worthless when it comes to improving my chess ability. Reason being that when you are just passively watching it doesn't stick.

 Also do you really gain anything as a beginner seeing some in depth analysis of various lines in some Kasparov vs Karpov game? Channels like the St Louis chess club for example has lots of that and for me I don't feel those videos have helped me much.

 However what I did find super useful on Youtube was watching Daniel Naroditsky's speedrun series. So much strategy advice to pick up on. Watching his videos I learned a lot about when it was ok to not follow chess principles and how to think in broad terms about strategy. And I could just relax and watch those videos as entertainment. I have no wish to study theory, openings etc and do hard work. I just want to enjoy chess. 

 Also analysing my own games I don't do much of. I just identify what blunder I did and if my overall strategy was correct. Feels like until you are at a level where you stop regularly blundering analysing games thoroughly is a waste of time. 

 Feels like until you are at a more advanced rating just learning how to think in broad terms and reason around strategy +doing tons of puzzles is enough.

edit: can add that when it comes to openings seems to me it's best to just play something very solid ( Ruy Lopez and Sicilian for me). Don't play some wacky openings just to "avoid theory". I have no clue about various lines in the openings I play but it doesn't matter at a novice level. If you are using crazy openings you are setting yourself up for failure. Also you will probably not improve as quickly either.

take the chess.com lessons.

You may want to take a look at the "Queen For A Day: the Girl's Guide to Chess Mastery" book, available on Amazon.com.    Readers get to play an entire chess game with Sophia, a fictional character.  For each move of the game, there are three options.  Pick the right move.  There are detailed explanations to see if the move is okay, bad, or excellent.  You will learn about how to play the middle game.  This book is endorsed by the 2019 US Women's Chess Champion.  

You have to explain to me what you like about the chess.com lessons?

Its all theory which is next to useless.

Every single time in every single topic, I never see you actually posting advice, just advertising for yourself. You're not willing to help anyone, except when you can profit from it.

#1
"I’m left clueless without a plan"
"Maybe there are books I can look into?"
++ Study 'Chess Fundamentals' - Capablanca
It contains in 60 pages all you need to know.
Botvinnik called it the best chess book ever written.

I think a good way to think about a chess move is the following. First off, you will want to win material if you can. Secondly, if you can't win material, you need to play a solid/good move (that doesn't give away material). For example, if you can win their queen this move, you're likely winning the game. There's no move that will improve your pieces that is going to be better than winning their queen. Same with everything down to bishops and knights. Pawns are nice to win as well, but it's not so clear that winning just a pawn is going to win you the game at your level. So the first and most important thing to do every move is to look for tactics. Every time you'll have to check your forcing moves and see if any of them is winning material. To get better, the most important thing is to get better at tactics therefore. There is no training more important than this. 

Of course, you're saying you feel lost in the Middlegame. To me, that sounds like a problem with the second part of deciding which move to make: there is no tactic, how do I make a decent looking move? The most important thing to remember is that chess really is all about making small plans. You generally don't have a grand plan where you think of what you want to achieve in 25 moves (your opponent will react after all), you have all these little ones of 1-3 moves and then you go on to the next. There are generally 4 kinds of small plans that you can think about: 1. improving your own piece; 2. making one of their pieces worse; 3. Creating a weakness; 4. Removing a weakness. 

To keep it simple, I'd focus on the pieceplay. If your pieces get to better positions, tactics usually become easier. This is what is meant by the chess proverb: tactics flow from superior positions. So playing with all of your pieces well is very important. You need to learn what you should do with all of your pieces. You can study this more with a book on middlegame strategy, but I'll try to explain what it comes down to. 

First off, a good exercise is to put a chessboard on the table, pick a piece and place it anywhere on the board. Then count how many moves that piece can make. If you do this, you'll notice that the knight in the corner can make 2 moves, while a knight somewhere in the c3-c6-f3-f6 box can make 8 moves. If you do the same with a bishop, you'll also notice that the bishop can make more moves if it's more to the center of the board. Rooks, however, never get more moves anywhere on the board. Queens, as they act like bishops, also get more active in the center of the board. This is the reason why the center is so important and why it's generally good chess to centralize your pieces (put them in the center (d4-d5-e4-e5) or close to it (c3-c6-f3-f6 square)). For knights this is crucial. Rooks don't improve in the center, so will stay back usually. 

So, apart from a central position, what does each piece like? Well, that knight really likes to be in or close to the center. We need to make sure that we can keep it there. We don't want our knights to be chased back to worse positions by enemy pawns. This is why knights prefer outposts. An outpost is a square that no enemy pawn can attack. A slightly less strong outpost, but still very useful, is a square they could attack with a pawn, but doing so would really damage their position. For example: think of a knight close to the enemy king. They could drive it off the square, but only by moving the pawn directly in front of their king 2 squares up. That would weaken their king so much, they might not want to do it. So, that square is still a very useful outpost for your knight. Of course, a knight wants to be as central as possible, so a central outpost is absolutely golddust for knights. For an example, google the Sveshnikov Sicilian. The d5 square is such a central outpost and getting and keeping a knight there is a big part of white's strategy. So, how do you make a knight better? Move it towards an outpost (can take several turns). 

The bishop really likes open diagonals. The worst enemy of your bishop is your own pawns. If you have a bishop on e2 and your own pawns on d3 and f3, your bishop can't do anything. It's just looking at its own pawns. That is called a 'bad bishop'. Now if you have your bishop on e2 and your pawns on d4 and f4 (pawns on the other color), your bishop can go anywhere it wants. That is a 'good bishop'. So, pawns on the same color as your bishop is bad for your bishop, pawns on the opposite color of your bishop is good for your bishop. Of course, if your bishop still has a great diagonal, it doesn't matter so much that the other pawns are also on the same color. Your bishop is then likely an 'active' bishop (that is: a bad bishop that is still very useful because it has great diagonals). If you imagine pawns on a2,b3,c4 and e4,f3,g2 (all the lights squares), a bishop on d5 could still be a great piece, because it could have diagonals all the way to your opponent's queenside and kingside. If the bishop was on d3 (behind the pawns) it would be the worst bishop imaginable. So, how do you make a (bad) bishop better? Get it to an open diagonal. Specifically for bad bishops: move your pawns off the color of your bishop, trade it off if you have to, or get it 'outside of the pawn chain' (find a diagonal where it's not being hampered by your own pawns or get it in front, like the scenario with the Bd5/Bd3 above). 

The rook loves open files. Their ideal world is the 2nd/7th rank. This is the rank where your opponent's pawns start from. Why? Because there's almost always yummy pawns to snack on and, if there are few pawns left, their king usually sits back on the 8th rank and get into big trouble if both rooks get to the 7th. So, how do you improve your rooks? Make sure to put them on a nice open file. Even better if you can prevent their rooks from doing the same. If you can double both rooks on the open file, usually the next thing you can achieve is getting your rook to the 7th rank, with massive consequences. 

The other type of file rooks like is a half-open file (where only your opponent has a pawn left, while you don't). I'll talk more about that when I come to weaknesses. 

How to improve your queen? Well, this is usually a little easier. Your queen is a strong piece and you'll want to use it where you attack your opponent. It is great for quickly targeting their weak pawns for example. Moreover, your queen usually doesn't get to go to the center, because there are enemy pieces that can chase your queen away. In an endgame though, you really want to put your queen in a central position. In endgames with only queens and pawns, that central position is very, very important. So, the queen likes the center too, but it's usually all over the board attacking weaknesses. 

In the endgame (or when chances of mate have gone away, usually after a queentrade), make sure to also activate your king! The king, like a rook, doesn't need to be in the center, but it's important to use, either to defend your pawns (and often: your 2nd rank against their rooks!) or to attack their pawns. In the endgame, a king can be stronger than a bishop or a knight. 

To train yourself, you could look at blitz games from stronger players. Try and focus on how they use their pieces. I bet you can see many of the things I've described above. 

The 2nd short plan you could have, is to limit your opponent's pieces. It's the same thing as making your own pieces better, but in reverse. If they have a knight on a great square, kick it away (always look out for creating a new outpost for their knight if you're moving a pawn!). If they have a bishop, try and lure their pawns to the same color as their bishop. Make sure their rooks can't get to the open file or make them move to defend something. Do they have a fantastic piece? Try and trade it for one of your own!

Weaknesses are a lot more difficult to understand. There are squares that can be weak, groups of squares that can be weak and pawns that can be weak. You've asked for it not to be overly complicated. I think it's fine for you to not worry too much about weaknesses just yet, with the exception of the weak pawn. Pawns are weak when they don't have a pawn next to them that can still defend them. The simplest weak pawn is the isolated pawn (both pawns next to it have gone off the board). Especially when that isolated pawn is on a half-open file, meaning your opponent doesn't have a pawn left on this file, this pawn will be very weak. Your opponent can put both rooks on this half-open file to put a lot of pressure on that lonely isolated pawn, forcing you to defend it with pieces. Pieces that need to defend things usually aren't going to be very active. In this sense, attacking a weakness will likely also have the effect of making their pieces be worse, while improving your own pieces (it's all connected). Another pawn that is weak, is the backward pawn. This is a pawn that does have a neighbour, but that neighbour is already advanced down the board and can't help the one at the back anymore. If you can keep the backwards pawn from reaching its mate, it won't be able to get any defense from another pawn. For an example, again look at the Sveshnikov Sicilian. You'll notice that not only does the white knight on d5 have a great outpost, but black's pawn on d6 is a backward pawn. It does have a neighbour (on e5), but that is so far advanced that it can't defend the backwards pawn on d6 anymore. Similar to isolated pawns, backwards pawns on half-open files can get hammered by enemy rooks, forcing you to defend it with pieces and making you passive. 

Doubled pawns aren't necessarily so weak. They're immobile and a weakness, but they can also have advantages. Knowing how to exploit doubled pawns requires more advanced strategic understanding. I wouldn't worry too much about the doubled pawn as a weakness. Of course, if you can double their pawns and make them isolated in the same move, that is likely going to be very good for you. After all, 1 isolated pawn can be a big weakness, having 2 is just double the trouble.

One last example of a weakness that you should be aware of is having a weak king. If they've lost some or all of their pawn cover, it's likely a good idea to direct pieces in that direction. But this is also connected with getting your pieces to good squares. 

Of course, when you see that you have such a weakness, you might try to get rid of it. If you can trade the isolated or backwards pawn, you should likely do so. If you have a weak king and are sensing trouble, as a last resort you could try and evacuate your king away to the center or the other side of the board. 

One last thing that you should be aware of is piece harmony. Harmony between your pieces just means that they're doing similar things and therefore making all of them stronger. If you have a great knight on the queenside, but start to attack on the kingside with your rooks, your knight won't be able to help out. That's why a chess proverb for attacking is that you should include all of your pieces when you're attacking. Another example: it's fine to keep your bishop on a slightly less open diagonal, if it is also looking down to the point where your rooks are attacking. It might mean that your opponent has less defensive moves available. Try and get them to work together in this regard. If you're (correctly) trying to centralize your pieces, usually piece harmony will follow as well. 

I hope this helps you with some pointers on how to play the middlegame. Please remember that tactics are the most important thing. Never forget to check that your strategic/good move isn't losing because it gives away a tactic before you play it! If you want to improve further, you could try a chess book on the middlegame. It's something I always advice my students to do, cause I strongly believe getting to understand the middlegame helps you to improve your understanding of the opening and the endgame. But it's always important to decide for yourself how much time and energy you want to put into chess and it's much better to do 5 mins of puzzles every day and have fun playing chess than spending 30 mins a week on a chess book that you don't like to read. Having fun is by far the most important thing for our game!

I got this,..

Very nice detailed explanation. Thanks

I too am a beginner. But I read some books 25 years ago..... And I can sum up chess strategy succinctly. Gain a material advantage. Then exchange material. The less material is on the board, the greater your materia advantage will be over your opponent. It only takes a single pawn advantage to win an endgame. Against a skilled player, a disadvantage of a single piece is almost insurmountable deficit. You have several components to your weapons to use. One is a positional advantage on the board. Another is a time advantage. The other is the material advantage. Any of these can be exploited to give you the advantage going into the end game if you know how to work them. Your overall goal at chess is to avoid becoming disadvantaged while gaining some advantage over your opponent that you can exploit into the end game. Once you gain an overall advantage it's in your interest to exchange material and strengthen that advantage. And then you exploited in the end game for a win.

At the highest levels...... Even who moves first can be a deciding advantage. Which is why black basically plays to draw... While white plays to win..

#17
"At the highest levels...... Even who moves first can be a deciding advantage."
++ No, the higher the level, the smaller the first move advantage.
The first move advantage is only one tempo, that is never decisive.

Here is my advice to you. Play as much as possible. Always ask yourself the question of "why do I want to play this move?" Along with the question "why did my opponent play that move?" .. 

That's step one and the most important one to help your chess brain develop. 

Then you take these two questions and you apply it to everything you can read about chess where moves are being made. On every move do this.. 

To make things easier get a small chess set you can physically play the moves shown or notated on a board so that you can do this step without always reading what the author is saying.. the.n you can compare what you though and the author thought later on!🤔.. 

Mm. Do the same with your bot games!

At #1