While playing chess, I discovered some key anecdotes that struck me as fundamental. What’s fascinating about these principles is that if you stick to them, even without knowing every detail (openings and gambits), your opponent only needs to make two or three mistakes for you to win the game.

Develop your minor pieces as early as possible, putting them on good squares

The winner of the chess opening is the person who better controls the center (via pawns or other minor pieces) after going into the middle game phase.

Gaining space in the center grants you two luxuries:

1. defended squares for your pieces to develop to
2. prevent your opponents’ pieces to safely develop to

what piece to develop? pawns to the center, develop knights before bishops, develop your queen and then connect the rooks.

where to develop to? develop in the forward direction of your chess board, preferably in your opponent’s half of the board to create a threat.

The sum of the number of squares your pieces control evaluates how likely you are to win, the more the better

avoid unnecessary pawn moves in the beginning of the game because your wasting valuable tempo and not activating/developing your more powerful pieces.

don’t over-work a piece

moving a single chess piece more than twice “over-works” the piece making it harder to defend, aka making it a liability, meaning you have to develop your other pieces to defend it because it’s gotten far away from defended squares.

If you found a good move, find a better one.

know that you’re tunnel-visioned when playing chess, don’t play a move just because you always play like that

check the opponent’s king on purpose, not for lacking a better move

If you don’t have a good follow up, checking your opponent’s king only loses you a tempo while helping your opponent develop their pieces. We don’t want this.

No hope-chess

Don’t try to perform tactics that you wish your opponent does not know how to deal with, always assume your opponent will make the best move in their turn.

Piece-trading rule of thumb: to take is a mistake.

Trade pieces only when it improves your position, not your opponent’s

trade your bad peices for opponent’s good peices for exmaple if the center pawn chain is on the white squares you could trade your white bishop for the opponent’s (for example) powerful knight.

If you could, do multiple things at once

chess is a turn based game where players can move their peices one move at a time, if performing legal moves in chess can help us achieve more than one goal we should consider it, for example, castling king side as white (shown below) where the queen and other minor pieces have already been developed helps achieve three things:

1. it connects the rooks, connected rooks defend each other.
2. it moves the king to a very safe spot, no more annoying checks.
3. the rook now defends the f2 pawn, which can be activated by trading that f2 pawn later in the game.

blunder-check your moves

Obviosly we don’t want to hang our queen in the move 5th right?

other than outright hanging a peice, watch out for skewers and king-pins and forks.

often develop forward

In an aggresive play style, we’d only want to move our pieces forward in the chess board It also means responding attacks via counter-attacks, often creating multiple opps for sacrifice or material gain.

take advantage of your opponents’ mistakes

when your opponent makes a mistake or breaks principles, it’s as if you’ve gained a tempo and can also break principles to capitalize on it.

think multiple moves in advance

play your opponent’s best move and have a response ready for it

count defenders vs attackers when opening up the center

when trying openning up the center while performing pawn pushes, move around minor pieces so that your attackers outnumber opponent’s defenders. this way after the dust settles, it’s not just a big trade and you’re up material.

Activate the king in the endgame

The king is the most powerful chess piece in the endgame, so powerful the game ends when he doesn’t have a place to go. activate him by developing it so he can supports your pawns, rooks and bishops.

last principle: know when to break the above principles

unless you have a really good reason,

[scratchpad: will include these later]

know the good sacrifice

material advantage is not necessarly indicative of the player winning, you can have more material but haven't yet been developed.