How do new players get better at chess?

Congrats.

Anyhow, a good trick is to observe what stronger opponents play against you, and see if you can integrate their tricks into your personal weaponry.

Openings principles for beginners makes countless victims, even among strong amateur players. Every 3 or 4 months, I do win a game in 4 moves against a player rated 2100+, as such:

You know what you are doing. Beginners don't.

Generally not following principles as a beginner loses games far more often than following them does, because they do not know what is what. When I started playing as a kid, we were playing a4-a5,b4-b5,c4-c5 (pawn walls and then captures with atrocious structures as a result), because it was fun for us to do so. People who start playing will not play much better moves than that without a general guideline. And principles provide general guideline.

Until one knows the concrete stuff, which comes with deeper understanding, general stuff is what one should learn (and yes even if they decide to try out some specific openings that break opening principles to some extent, they should still be aware of what those principles are). Sure, sometimes knights on the rim are necessary, but statistically, much more often than not, it is better to play Nf3 than Nh3.

Basically, you learn the general rules, and only then you learn how and when to break them.

One of the principles is don't move the f pawn until you know better.

So, you're assuming I never was a beginner and am not speaking out of experience?

False, trying out the King's Gambit is recommended to beginners to learn from what then happens.

You've learned the principles, now you are 2 000+ chess.com player so obviously pretty good, and yet you are saying that others shouldn't learn principles as you did? Yes, it took time to eradicate some bad habits, but that is how it works. Trial and error. Nobody can play well from the start.

Tell that to many GMs and other masters who said that moving f pawn as a beginner can be deadly. In any case, sure, following principles blindly will lose some games, but that is how chess works. Not following them at the start will lose more games, that one is for sure, because one will just play blindly then.

I like to learn from my own mistakes, not from misplacing my Queen's Bishop because some lazy fool decided it was fit an advice to force me believing I must take it out no matter what, or I'm not "complete".

When I taught others to play chess, it did not take them years to get rid of these dumb ideas, because I did not teach them that sort of lies.

That's why originally I suggested watching GMs on YouTube that will tell you when you should and shouldn't follow certain principals.. honestly I feel at beginner level YouTube is gold when it comes to learning the game. Then books later on.

I won't tell any GM about anything. Back in the 90s in France, this is an advice you would get while playing in chess clubs. Nobody said the King's Gambit was so good, but that it was full of usefull lessons. And it was wrong, since it scared me from playing 1....-e5 for many years, which is what I play now. Again, dumb advices to beginners ruined progress.

Youtube is a foul way to learn chess. A chessboard and anotated games is what you need. Once, I've read all the games of the Soviet Championship. It was boring and tedious. Mostly because it was not annotated. And also because they were playing openings I don't play.

At your level maybe..

Like this: play against yourself and find out if this is draw or win:

No, at the level I was then, aka 1500-1700.

OP isn't 1500-700.. there are some great YouTube videos for beginners.. just gotta go searching.

Integrate Knight manoeuvers:

Go with the Knight from a1 to a1 back around the board, going to b1, c1 d1 etc without taking a pawn and without going on controled squares. Once you can do it in less than 3 minutes, you can relax.

I'm no pro at the game so in your example all I can come out to is black sacing the bishop for a draw.

Even most moves in Philidor defense you play follow principles (you control the center, develop relatively quickly, generally play with each piece once), sure you break them here and there. And even that d3-e4 slightly unorthodox opening has principles in it (not every move of course).

Plus you surely realize that most openings follow principles even more than you do in your openings. In any case, those are guidelines, loose set of guidelines that should be understood as such. If one is to improve, he will have too look through their games and see their mistakes,be it becuase mistake came from following, or more often not following principles.