Please Help

Look guys. I have been studying how to play chess for the past year or so. I am part of a local chess club. I’ve paid for chessable.com lessons and repertoire learning courses. I’ve taken lessons on chess.com and I’ve played almost 9000 puzzles in a year. I pay for a diamond subscription on here and play bots, revisit my games, and use the “checks-captures-attacks,” method during live play. I’ve read books by people like Levy Rozman, Lars Schandorff, and the Polgars. I’ve also checked my stats to see when I’m best at what time of day/night and where I’m weak. I’m not unintelligent- I’m 98th percentile in IQ. My brother said I overthink everything and that’s why I lose. This is the only thing I’ve ever had trouble being good at academically and it’s more irritating than I can even describe. Do any of you chess vets have any ideas/comments/suggestions? Anything would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Mr. Severely Humbled

One thing that jumps out in your stats is your puzzle success rate. It is about 50%, which is way too low, it means that you do not do puzzles the right way. You should aim for at least 80% success rate. You probably just go for "knee-jerk" moves without really calculating all the lines: you do not try to find all defensive resources your opponent might have.

Doing puzzles this way is not very useful. It is like doing lazy push ups without lifting your legs and hips off the ground.

You say you tend to overthink things. You certainly do not overthink your puzzle solutions. Prioritize quality over quantity. Spend more time on each puzzle.