How to Help a New Player

I have a friend who recently started playing. I review his games with him, help him solve puzzles occasionally, and generally instruct his study of fundamentals. I have recommended Aman Hambleton's Building Habits series, but I feel like, even early on in ruleset 1, the threshold is simply too high for complete beginners.

He can almost hold 300 rapid but it's very shaky after about 300 games. A typical game for him goes as follows: He develops his pieces and gets into a middlegame where a shockingly sharp 320 outplays him tactically and/or he hangs a piece to a pawn. I feel at this level, he will most likely give up before a breakthrough or rocket to the 500s after a breakthrough. 

Asking for ideas and insight that might help my friend in the short-term and prevent him from burning out totally. It would be nice to have a few helpful rules for him to follow, like a checklist or something to prevent basic blunders.

Have you explained tactics like the fork, pin, discovered check or discovered attack, the skewer, sacrifice? Castling early, connecting Rooks, giving Bishops long clear diagonals? And use the clock to his advantage and as a weapon against his opponent. I don't play fast games so some of this may not be useful.

I have covered tactics with him but he's still hanging full pieces and I tell him to worry more about playing solid than going for every knight fork he might see. There are a few instances where his opponents played something very trappy where I've discussed playing in a more tactical way defensively ie whenever the center opens and he has castled we covered how sometimes you can leave a piece "hanging" in the center if it can only be captured by the queen and subsequently can be pinned to a king by a rook. The only reason I covered this with him is I have shown it to beginners before and they had great results and fun winning their opponent's queens.

Good advice on playing solid. Forks are one tool among many. He sounds enthusiastic and eager to learn. Who knows where he'll get to in the world of chess?

Find a live coach for him

If you tell me his username I will look at his games.

He just has to do puzzles, solving puzzles is always the solution. And tell him to not solve them move by move, he should try to find the full solution for the puzzle before making the first move, doesn't matter if it takes 5-10 minutes per puzzle

Tell him to watch videos of masters on YouTube where they teach games and analyze the moves and the reasoning behind them.

There are many excellent instructional books. Reinfeld’s Complete Chess Course has been around for 70 years. It has sections on opening principles, simple tactics, and middlegame planning. A good book will allow him to go at his own pace and to jump around the various topics to get what he needs at the moment.

For someone who has played +300 games and knows to develop their pieces, the main problem is probably pattern recognition. If he hangs all his pieces before move 20 the videos won't help

I think Swot analysis will help your friend.