A couple of questions from a complete noob...

1) during development, where should I be aiming to put my bishops? Are D3/C4 and E3/F4 good places to be aiming for in a general development? I realise that it will change depending on what my opponent plays, but is the idea a good starting point? Or should I put them further forward (I looked at the analysis and one of the recommendations was 4 Bb4, which I see now would have been much better...)?
 
2) What should I be looking to do after all my pieces have been developed? I often find that my pieces don't appear to have many useful moves. Should I be looking to trade pawns? A lot of the pieces that I think I can take just end up with me losing out on any trades.
 
3) Should I be worrying about pawn structure at this stage in my learning? For example, is Black's pawn structure from around move 5..f6 considered good? By contrast, at the same point, I don't appear to have much of a structure to my pawns.
 
Thanks,
 
Dave.
 

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

1. in your developing faze you should control the center with your pawns, supported by your knights then bishops (which you did). you want to put your knights first as the bishops are a lot more flexible and can go to d3/c4/b5 or e3/f4/g5 each having their own respectable ideas. I recommend c4/d3 and f4/g5 as it is more active and keeps the initiative while d3/e3 is more passive. Also don't put your bishops in front of your E and D pawns because it will cramp your position. Another thing to note in the opening is there are still plenty of tactics even if not many pieces are developed. so make sure you keep an eye out for those. 

2. In the middle game try to have a plan for getting to a winning position, ie promotion, checkmate, material advantage in an endgame, etc. The most straightforward way and the easiest is attacking the king and going for checkmate. Sometimes you will need help from a rook or even use a pawn break for the attack. In addition, controlling the center is another key component in the middle game. of course, these are the basic ideas of a middle game once you can get a hang of this you will want to expand the ideas to piece improvement, space advantage, pawn advantage vs activity, etc. 

3. It is hard to say about pawn structure, but i would say worry about it a little. with the number of pieces that are lost/gained, it will not take that much of an effect. However, it is good to build the habit of keeping your pawn structure intact. 5.f6 doesn't weaken the pawn structure but it does weaken black's king safety.

hope this helped.

Thanks for that, it was very helpful. 

Regarding Bishop locations, if playing black, I assume the appropriate locations would be c5/d4 and g4/f5?

Development stage looked fine to me. Control the centre, develop fast, knights & bishops first and try to castle quick for king safety, unless opponent is already attacking on the side you were planning to castle on.

After castling, try not to move the pawns in front of the king exposing the king like you did when taking the bishop.

And most importantly try not to blunder your pieces away. Don’t trade your bishop for a pawn for example since a bishop is worth 3-3,5 pawns in material. And try not leave your pieces hanging.

So basically just check before your move if you have pieces hanging and if the piece you are going to move will be hanging after that move.

The values of the pieces are like this.

pawn = 1 pawn

knight = 3 pawns

bishop = 3-3,5 pawns depending on who you ask

rook = 5 pawns

queen = 9 pawns

So do not trade a bishop for a pawn or your queen for a knight unless you have a very, very good reason like a forced mate you can see happening for certain that you can achieve by sacrificing.

Thanks for your reply. Leaving pieces hanging is probably my biggest problem at the moment - I often don’t see them until just after I’ve made a move that leaves them hanging. I guess I get tunnel vision. 

When you say 'the pawns in front of the King', do you mean only the one on the same file, or do you mean all of them, i.e. f, g and h files? The reason I moved my h pawn was to give space for the King to move - this is something I picked up from watching chessbrah's Building Habbits video. Should I have moved it up earlier, e.g. immediately after 3.. Bg5?. Or does this go against the idea of not moving the pawns in front of the King?

As for the e pawn, I realised after I took the Bishop that it was a bad idea when I saw my King standing there looking quite exposed!

1) "during development, where should I be aiming to put mu bishops?"
++ That entitely depends on what the opponent plays. e2, d3, c4, b5, g2, h3; d2, e3, f4, g5, b2, a3 are all good under certain circumstances. That is one reason why you should play your knights before your bishops. For the knights f3, c3, f6, c6 are natural, for the bishops it depends on the pawns.
 
"2) What should I be looking to do after all my pieces have been developed?"
++ After you have played 2 pawns d- and e-, 2 knights and 2 bishops into play, castle O-O to bring your king to safety and to connect your rooks, then put rooks on open files and last but not least find a good square for your queen.

"I often find that my pieces don't appear to have many useful moves."
++ Try to trade passive pieces of yours for active pieces of your opponent.

"Should I be looking to trade pawns?"
++ Try to trade your wing pawn for a central pawn of your opponent.

"3) Should I be worrying about pawn structure at this stage in my learning?" ++ Yes, pawns are the soul of chess. Your question 1) on bishops depends on the positions of the pawns.

"is Black's pawn structure from around move 5..f6 considered good?" ++ No, pawn moves other than e- and d-pawns do not contribute to development or to the center and they are weakening

(1) As a general rule, if one Bishop goes to c4 then the other should go to e3. If one goes to f4, then the other should go to e2 or d3. Only rarely should the two Bishops both be developed to the fourth rank.

One reason for this is that Bishops on c4 and f4 put pressure on entirely different sectors of the board... one aimed at the Q-side and the other aimed at the K-side. They cannot cooperate. On the other hand, Bishops on c4 and e3 (or on f4 and d3) sit on neighboring diagonals, and can both focus pressure onto the same flank.

It's not enough to just move your pieces out from their original squares... purely cosmetic development accomplishes little. The pieces should be moved out to posts where they can cooperate with other developed pieces.

(2) Developing your pieces and then running out of ideas is often a sign that your pieces were developed haphazardly, just to get them off the back rank, rather than taking up positions from which they can cooperate towards some goal.

(3) Pawn Structure is always worth thinking about. The Pawn structure forms the terrain within which the pieces maneuver.

Black's Pawn formation of a7-b6-c7-d6-e5-f6-g7 is very weakening, since his light squares are left almost defenseless while his dark-squared Bishop becomes almost worthless, buried alive inside its own position.

Giving the breathlng room for the king by moving the H pawn and kicking the bishop was OK. You can also give the breathing room with the A and H file pawns to avoid getting back rank mated even if not kicking an enemy piece and that’s OK.

in general try not to move the 3 pawns in front of the king much more than that if not absolutely neccessary.

in the game you posted you could have taken the bishop with your queen in stead of taking with the G pawn and avoided exposing the king which would have been better in my opinion.

But chess is a game where you have to adapt all the time so there are no rules that are set in stone, only guidellnes.

Your opening play is fine. Your absolute greatest weakness is that you can't see when your opponent's pieces are protected and when your own are being attacked. 

If you keep hanging and blundering pieces like this then the opening, pawn structure, and such are all meaningless. You don't need pawn structure if you don't have any pawns. You don't need opening knowledge if you're going to hang all those pieces you've developed. Until you stop blundering pieces every couple moves, your middlegame plan should be to not blunder any of your pieces. You need to see the whole board. The only way I know to improve this is by playing more and doing puzzles with an active focus on seeing pieces and not blundering. 

One more tip. Play slower. You have more than 10 minutes time left out of 15 minutes when the game ends.

If you play slower you have more time to check that you don’t hang your pieces or miss opportunities to capture hanging opponent pieces.

i mostly play 45/45 time controls so I have enough time to think. I’m still a beginner myself you see.

well I like where the one guy pointed to your major blunders...after reading what he wrote, and noting that I too am pretty rough, vision is a big thing.  Those blunders when I read his notes and watched the board, I said, shoot that's a thing that I would've missed before too (and might still miss)

so definitely more board awareness will help you improve 

Move 16 - I imagine you playing and this was your thought in the moment "shoot how did I not see that!"

Move 20 - I imagine tunnel vision...he's gonna take my H3 pawn for check so I need to protect my king...take take..."shoot how did I not see that!"

Move 24 - I imagine again tunnel vision (so at this point being the right not great player I am and reading the other guy's commentary - if you were to reassess - you would say for the last 8 moves, you've really only seeing and playing the right side of the board (so the hanging bishop you didn't see it because you just hadn't been seeing it since Move 16)

Move 25 - pawn capture followed by rook capture - so here I imagine your mindset was oh crap what can I do to pressure...but if you really look at that pawn capture...it doesn't accomplish anything for you (if he doesn't take with the rook you're still attacking a pawn with a knight captured by a king possibly)...here just my guess the engine wants you to engage one of the rooks 

from here you're just holding on hoping your opponent makes back to back blunders but your down on material with a bad position so and kind of go for the proverbial "let me go down fighting" approach (I do that too!)

I'm rated 300 something...so i'm pretty rough as well

i'm not sure how to say it gets better it does i'm told...but it's hard and can be constantly demoralizing especially when you feel like you're making the same errors and not understanding what you need to do to fix and learn from them (I honestly hate this response to "do more puzzles and pay close attention."  

I understand the value of puzzles but a puzzle is not a game and a puzzle if not helping me understand how to recover when I blunder my queen...games and feedback I feel are of greater value.

Should you fancy a game any time, please hit me up....we'll both get better at this time in 

1. In the game you posted, 3…Bg4 is not a great move. You could play 4.dxe5, because if 4…dxe5?, you have 5.Qxd8+ Kxd8 6.Nxe5, winning a pawn with a great position (he has to move Be6 or Bh5 to protect the pawn @ f7).
Check out the famous Opera Game, in which Morphy made short work of a couple of doofuses. He played 4.dxe5 Bxf3 5.Qxf3 dxe5 6.Bc4. White is threatening mate on f7, and Black twists himself into knots trying to deal with White's barrage of constant threats.

b. Re. opening principles: Get yourself a good book on general chess for learning players, Just about any book with an insulting title (Chess for Dummies, Chess for Beginners, ets.) will work.

Γ. Do you know the fundamentals of simple mates? K+R vs. R, K+Q vs. Q, K+P vs. K, K+B+B vs. K? Learn them!

Mars. I agree with those who said that opening principles don't matter much if you give up pieces and queens. Tactics are the fundamentals of chess! So, do puzzles. Lots of puzzles. Do five puzzles per day, and you'll see improvement in your play. Do 10/d, and you'll improve faster!

Enjoy.

1. It depends on your opening and their plays, different strategies/positions have different ideal placements. Just try to have your bishop able to go to as many good places on the board as possible and avoid having it block off moving your own material, such as other pieces or pawns.

2. Just keep trying to improve where your pieces are. There's no one thing that will fix all positions, see if you can point your pieces at their king, or at their pieces so that their pieces are under attack without them being able to take you.  

3. Pawns aren't noticeable better or worse between you. Try to keep your pawns in front of your king and avoid doubling those if you can, but even that's a mild thing at best.

I bring up a few things in the game below, but only two moves really mattered. When you took their pawn with your bishop on move 16 so you'd lose it to the knight was when you first got in real trouble. The second move was when your queen took their knight on move 20, both for mossing a chance to turn the game around and for losing a queen for a knight, which was the worst exchange you had in the game and afterwards you never got a chance back in. Those two moves defined everything else, hanging material issues usually trump everything else, especially at this level. Focus on counting attackers and defenders to see if a piece can be taken for free or not, both to avoiding losing pieces on your side and to take free pieces from your opponent.