I can't "calculate"

do puzzles.

Maybe they're just looking for an excuse to say the girl was cute?

Solid advice on calculating by Taco dude

Bookwise I recommend  The Inner Game of Chess by Andrew Soltis is really good for 1500-2000 if you like books and can get a copy I think you could benefit from it

Sharing is caring lol =P

ماذا تقصد 1692 لماذا لا يوجد مترجم في المنتدى الخاص فيكم

ماذا تقصد 1692 لماذا لا يوجد مترجم خاص بلمنتدى الخاص فيكم

Three good ways to practice board visualization. All three of these are very hard at first but you will get better at them over time. Just pick one unless you are very ambitious.

1. Play blindfold chess against the computer, maybe one or two games a week. Most software will let you hide the pieces(*) on the board. Set the engine to be about your own strength, set the time control at 30 moves in 30 minutes or something like that. You won't win, but you will get better at "seeing" the pieces on the board. (*) In true blindfold chess you also can't see the board. Don't worry about that, the point here is not to be able to play "blindfold" chess, but to get better at sighted chess.

2. Collect puzzles with a very long solution but only one main line. The point is when solving in your head you need to keep track of the position as it differs more and more from the diagram position.

3. Collect some easier puzzles which are do-able for you but you haven't seen before. Then when you are doing something mindless (e.g. going for a walk), you take out a new position, _memorize_ the position, put the diagram away, and try to solve the position without looking at the diagram. If the position is too fuzzy, look at the diagram again then put it away and try to solve. Obviously the puzzles can't be so easy that you solve them without trying before you finish memorizing them.

if you build up your store of patterns that you have memorized (smothered mate & back rank mate are 2 examples of what i mean), you will be able to take a lot of shortcuts when calculating... suggest a lot of puzzle rush.

I can 

1+1=2

Back when I was in college I played a fair amount of blindfold chess.  But I don't have a photographic memory, so it was a LOT of work.  Each move, I'd remind myself what was on each and every square.  What was interesting, is that after doing all this tedious "reminding" work for about 10 or 15 moves, a clear picture of the position would gradually emerge in my mind, and after about the 15th move, I didn't need to do any reminding anymore, I had a clear picture of the board in my head.  And it got better with practice.

By training it the right way, everyone can achieve a decent level when calculating variants. Visualization, blind chess, specific puzzles to predict the following moves through forced continuations; they could be options to improve the calculation.