Opening principles alone won't improve your rating into the 1000's.

After playing for over a year and 877 games finally making it to 500 rated utilizing basic openings I have discovered the general advice for getting better at chess is not the best advice. Just because you develop pieces with something like the London, Italian ect does not mean you will know what you're doing. It can be pointless advice because at least 80% of people sub 300-800 use opening principles. The people who advance know how to capitalize on their opponent and see tactics when it comes to middle and end game. Now even if you follow the advice of check, captures, attacks you can still have problems finding the right moves. I know when it comes to me it's hard to see what I can do even if I look for CCC's. If you can't improve board vision, come up with a plan or see what to do in a situation you will NOT get better at chess. Either you have to find a way to improve this or just accept what ever rating you may have. Not everyone can improve. Chess is more complex than just going "hey do ABC and you will reach 1500 rated in 5 months." It put's a false narrative in peoples minds when it comes to learning the game. Chess is not some robot system of memorize XYZ, you can do that but it won't improve your rating by much. It takes hard work. It took me 8 hours of playing in one sitting at times, puzzles videos ect to gain my current rating starting from 100. Most advice can seem like a get rich scheme, kind of like the wayward queen attack.

True

Opening principles is only one piece of the puzzle. I would suggest opening principles to those that seem to not follow it. Different people need improvement in different areas. People usually look at a few of a player’s games to see where they are weak and make suggestions from there.

I recently have been winning a lot of my games and I found this tip to be super useful. I heard it in a YouTube video, but it resonated with me hard and instantly improved my game. The tip is... Unless you are moving a piece out of harms way, or taking a free piece without trading move all of your pieces towards the center of the board. That is, when taking pawns take inward towards the center, when moving knights, find open squares in the center of the board (not on the edges), if moving bishops (same thing only have them on a diagonal that points towards the center), and (if castling) link the rooks (shifting them towards the center.) I know it's a fundamental idea and there's probably a more technical term for it, but it really works. I heard it in a video on YouTube by ChessBrah (I recommend watching his vids). That is the only tip I got, I only know like 2 openings so I'm not really the expert on that, but with those 2 openings my wins are starting to rack up.

Controlling the center is one of the opening principles. ChessBrah gave a good explanation on how to do it.

:P

I know. I have watched allot of his videos. I know of most of the Chess Youtubers and watch a lot of their content.