A piece left where it can be taken for nothing decides most early chess games. It has little to do with seeing many moves ahead. It's a checking habit, and a habit can be built on day one.
Your first day
Play one full game against the computer at its easiest level, and before every move ask one question: after this move, can anything I own be captured for free?
Go to lichess.org, choose Play with the computer, set the level to the lowest and play White. No account is needed. If you don't know how the pieces move yet, lichess.org/learn teaches it in about ten minutes, and the board only lets you make legal moves anyway. Get your knights and bishops out early, and castle, which tucks your king beside a rook, when the option appears.
Before each move, look at the square you're moving to and at what you're leaving behind. Check whether an opposing piece could take something of yours that nothing else of yours defends. Then check the same thing in reverse: did the computer just leave a piece you can take?
When the game ends, win or lose, find the move where you first lost a piece. You're done when you can say what you should have checked.
The thing most people miss
At beginner level, games are very often decided by loose pieces, more than by strategy. One side leaves a piece unprotected, the other takes it, and the rest of the game is a struggle to recover. That's why the checking habit is worth more than any opening or plan: it stops the mistake that decides most early games, and it lets you punish the same mistake from your opponent.
It also explains why calculating far ahead isn't the beginner's skill. You can't build a clever attack out of pieces that are hanging, so make the board safe first and the attacks come later.
What not to do
Don't memorise opening lines yet. A long line you don't understand leaves you stranded the moment the computer plays something different. Three simple rules are enough for now: develop your knights and bishops, control the centre, and castle.
Once checking becomes automatic, learn the two patterns that win the most material for beginners: the fork, where one piece attacks two at once, and the pin, where a piece is stuck in front of something more valuable. Lichess has free puzzles for exactly these, and a few a day builds recognition quickly.