middle game...

well I'm horrible when it comes to middle game tactics. so I see everyone posting "learn middle game tactics to get better" bla bla bla.. but nobody really explains how they trained their middle game tactics. openings are easy, YouTube, lichess, chess.com will give you all the openings you need. end games, theres puzzles, matein1-2-3-4.. middle games are tricky... whenever I try to really come up with a middle game attack it gets thwarted pretty quickly, and I really don't know how to learn new attacks.. so, my question, how did you train your middle game? by just playing? reading a book? playing out scenarios? I know I'm fairly hard on myself even though I've only been trying to seriously get better for only a couple months, but I do want to learn. I just need stuff dumbed down.

What do you mean by a middle game attack?

As a general guideline, only go for an attack on the opponents King when it is justified by a significant lead in development, significantly more force near the opponent King or you see a forced mate.

Another good guideline is to only attack after you have developed all your pieces.

In other cases it is better to just look for tactics each move, if you find none, look for a startegic move that improves your own pieces, gains space etc or makes an opponent piece worse for example. If you can not find any useful move, then as a last resort, look for a move that does not make your position worse at least.

Checkmate is the ultimate goal, but to get there, you need to set many smaller goals, like improving your pieces and your position in order to gain a lead in material, like an extra pawn and then converting that to a win by promoting the extra pawn and finally checkmating your opponent.

And I trained by reading (or studying) books, doing the lessons on chess.com, doing a lot of tactics puzzles, studying annotated master games and analyzing my own games.

I am still pretty bad at chess, but I have improved a lot compared to how I played when I started.

Checked one of your games (the last one against Ser0666).

Your opponent had their Knight hanging for several moves after move 21. Finally you decided to move the pawn that was attacking the Knight instead of capturing it.

So more tactical awareness is needed.

A time consuming but effective approach is simply go over your games and find and categorize the tactics you miss. You end up with a top list and I assure you that will raise your awareness.

(In my case I found that I missed a lot of exposed king forks. That discovery had immediate effect).

Good Positional Chess, Planning & Strategy Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/introduction-to-positional-chess-planning-strategy

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

Check out this book: ''Simple Chess.'' You have it on YT as well: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUrgfsyInqNbkyiwPSSBQ6ALkkccKItPE

If you are looking for a coach, I can teach you how to think in the middlegame.