As with all beginners they tend to prefer to play from the opening and then fight their way through middlegame to endgame.
The trick to chess is learning the game the other way round.
Learn your endgames first. Learn all the basic mates. Queen and king v king. Rook and king v king. 2 bishops and king v king. etc.
Then, practice pawn endings. 1 pawn and king v king. add another pawn for each side. etc etc. Slowly add these games say with a piece each.
This will give you fundamentals of how to mate or force an advantage in material into wins.
As you get better, practice tactics. (Middlegame) Look for forks, skewers, discovered checks andattacks. The more you practice these the better you'll be. Then when you get an advantage you'll know what to do because youve played a bishop up in your endgame practice, right?
Finally, start focussing on openings. Use basic opening principles at first ie Control the centre, develop your pieces quickly, get your king safe. If you stick to these basic rules youll quickly find the opening comes naturally.
Later you can focus on a particular opening. Maybe read up on a GM who plays the same one. See what his ideas and plans behind it are. Don't keep changing. Learn one thouroughly and youll learn a lot from your losses.
Good luck with your chess and I hope these tips help you improve a little. Most of all, play a lot and have fun.
So I was winning fairly consistently in 5-minute blitz games, but upon moving to 10-minute blitz games, I find myself losing consistently. The players are of the same level as I was playing before, so I am not sure what to do. My endgame as well as my middlegame are fairly non-existent, so I'm asking for whatever help I can get. I'm looking mainly for general strategy advice. Am I employing some sort of general tactic that is failing here that I just don't see? Please help.
Here are 2 of my losses: