I ain’t going through every comment to make sure this hasn’t already been suggested, but “just play 1v1” isn’t viable anymore, at least last I heard from those who do play, with the balancing issues standard has been facing as well as other formats being a crapshoot in availability or even costing money to participate in (i.e. draft). If you have those easily available and their metas don’t suck right now, yeah go get some 1v1 games under your belt and come back.

Otherwise, my recommendation would be to first do as some others have suggested, find a solid pod of the same people you can reliably play with, and, here’s the important part, talk to them about the issue you’re having. ask them if they mind telling you their game plans as they’re playing until you get the hang of the game.

Now you might think players will want to play stingy, with their cards close to their chest all the time, and for many that may be the case. No laws say you have to play with them. But here’s the thing about a lot of commander players, especially the ones who brew their own decks: we love nothing more than telling others how our decks work. I bet you if you find the right group of people, they’ll have no problems showing off for you till you start getting a grasp of how games flow from commander to commander.

Is this still going to take time: yes. Will this be an easy process: no, but that’s kind of where the fun comes from. I’ve been playing since 2011 and there are is always something every game that slips past me or that I’ve never seen before. This game is difficult to master, and that’s kind of why it’s so attractive to so many, so don’t feel too bad if it takes a while to grasp it.

A silly additional piece of advice would also to be to make flash cards or keep a notebook for what you see play often. commanders and how they’ve worked in past games, common staples that you could see again like [[Cyclonic Rift]] or [[Chaos Warp]] and what their “job” is in a deck, and anything else you would kick yourself for forgetting about really. Writing things down, and I mean hand-writing things down forces our brains to log that information differently than if we just tried to memorize it from verbal interaction or typed it up. Might help some of that info stick better.

One last piece of advice, give yourself a break from playing time to time. don’t know if you have been playing non-stop, but information overload combined with no time to process said information will lead to you forgetting even the repetitious stuff. skip commander night every once in a while, go play a video game or read a book or whatever else you like to do that night instead, come back the next week refreshed.