The intersting thing about these principls is that when you try to stay true to them even though you do not necessarly know the lines, it only takes your opponent 2 or 3 mistakes for them to lose the game to you.

1. develop your minor pieces as early as possible, putting them on good squares

what piece to develop? pawns in the center, develop knights before bishops, 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 baord 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 unneccessary pawn moves in the begenning of the game because your wasting valuable tempo and not activating your more powerful peices.

2. don’t over-work a piece

moving a single chess peice more than twice “over-works” the piece making it harder to defend, aka making it a liability.

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

4. 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 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 c7 pawn, which can be activated by trading that c7 pawn later in the game.

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. think multiple moves in advance

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

8. 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.

last one: know when to break the above principles

unless you have a really good reason,

know the good sacrifice

activate the king in the endgames

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

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

The winner of the opening: is the person better controlling the center after going into the middle game phase