You're 1700 and didn't improve after 2 months?
Well of course, what did you expect? You're not a beginner anymore. Improvement takes time.
(And if you read 15 books in 2 months then you really did waste your time. Quality over quantity. If you read 15 books that fast you're not going to remember anything).
But look, you did learn something. You learned that an ability and predilection for calculating tactics in a game is not necessarily useful. This naturally leads you to form a strategy of identifying critical and non-critical positions and then approaching them accordingly. This is a sense you could refine after many more months (and years) of playing.
But yeah... that's a lot of work. Chess is a lot of work. And if you don't begin young you're not going to be one of the best. So sure, give up if you want, but the idea that you can't improve at age 30 is silly.
I'm 30 years old and for the past two months I've been doing 6 hours a day of chess training:
2 hours, doing tactics puzzles.
30 min of blindfold chess.
1.5 hours, reading chess books.
2 hours, playing.
After 15 books read about a variety of subjects (openings, strategy, pawn structures, endgames, tactics, etc), 2840 tactic puzzles solved and hundreds of games played, I haven't improved at all.
I have found little to no use in memorizing openings. Now I play the first few moves like a machine, but by move 10 or 15 I may have already made a serious inaccuracy. It's no use to have an early advantage if you don't really know how to preserve and increase it. The machine doesn't explain to me why I've gone from 0.30 to -0.20 in some move, and I don't see it either, so I'm screwed.
By doing so many puzzles, currently it's like my mind is more open to the possibility of some hidden winning combination in every position in the middle game. So I calculate more lines and further into the future. The result is I waste a lot of time calculating lines when there is no winning tactic at all in that position. Sometimes I even lose the game because I miss some opponent self-saving move 6 moves ahead. The successful tactics I see, I would've seen them without doing a single puzzle as "training", now and when I was 11 years old.
Blindfold chess practice has been by far the most useless thing. I still can't keep track of a simple game in my mind. After a few moves I barely remember where every piece is, and it takes me like a minute of thinking to see what I would see in just one second with my eyes open. After two months playing blindfold chess every day, my blindfold chess skill is the same as day one. I've come to the conclusion that either blindfold chess is a lie or you can't achieve it by practice.
So today, being very confused, I decided to do some research. I read a study that estimates that practice time only makes a 20 to 25 percent of the difference in performance in music, physical sports and chess. That makes sense. When I see a game between players a few hundred points ELO below me I can instantly spot their mistakes. I think to myself "DUDE, DON'T YOU SEE THAT MOVE SUCKS? I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE BEST MOVE IS, BUT IT SURELY CAN'T BE THAT ONE", but I am able to spot it not because I know some openings or have read some books or done some puzzles, it's something actually more instinctive than logical, it's a feeling rather than a thought. I'm pretty sure a player a few hundred points ELO above me feels the same when watching people like me playing.
My point is, there is no use in practice or training after a certain point. Diminishing returns to its fullest. I guess chess books, chess videos, chess whatever are things to sell to people that mistakenly believes it will make them play better.
Probably some people will be inclined to say TALENT is as important as KNOWLEDGE, PRACTICE and TRUE DEDICATION. Then what about Sergey Karjakin? some kid who achieved "Grandmaster" title before his balls dropped. What kind of knowledge or practice could he have?
The answer, to me, after studying this matter is:
1. Talent, something you're born with.
2. What you learn when your brain is not fully developed yet. The less developed the brain, the faster you learn.
So being good at chess or music, among other things, is a combination of 1 and 2. After a certain point you won't get much better, no matter how much you play, no matter how much you study. The 0.00001% progress will be so negligible that it won't make feel you better, so it's like you don't actually progress, it's not worth it.
I'm going to abandon my chess training and spend time in things in which I can actually improve (LOL).