Chessbrahs fundamental principles

And other violations too. But not deliberately. I try my best to not do so. The issue is that I was having more success before knowing these principles.

Me? More the 700+ set.

Well, yes. But I try to follow all the principles. Often it comes down to a judgement call about which principle to follow that turn - trade, centre, tactic, activate ... Hard to do everything each turn, lol 😆

How long?

I've only used the 700+ set. I was about 750 when I started using the principles, and have since dropped about 80 points.

What the principles are trying to tell you is what is important and what is not important. The main message is "play simple chess and don't hang pieces". But those are just guidelines. You have to try to play well and find good moves.

Is your brah fitting correctly? If mine chafes at all, I find it difficult to make good moves. And I get under the arm pits. I hope that helps.

Absolutely. But why, do you think, I was playing better when not following the principles than when following them? Is it just coincidence, or is there something about the principles themselves that needs adjustment?

Before starting using the principles I would often (though not always) open with King's Gambit or the Scandinavian. I did this on the recommendation from another source to open with something that would not be expected from opponents and which they wouldn't be highly experienced dealing with. During the midgame I'd play to get up on material then seek to trade/simplify into the end game as quickly as possible. Other principles remained the same .

What seemed to happen from this approach is that it would be quickly apparent who was likely to win. The games seemed quicker and more decisive. And I won slightly more than I lost. However, I wasn't sure I was actually developing my chess abilities and I did stall around 750.

By adopting these chessbrah principles, though, my games seem to follow a very similar pattern of a safe and equal opening, then followed by a closed misnamed where I feel hemmed in and inevitably make some calculation error or blunder a piece which then give my opponent a clear advantage and I spend the rest of the game playing on the back foot before inevitably losing.

When you start to change the way you play, it is common for your rating to go down and fluctuate. Elo alone is not the best way to judge your play or improvement. You've said that your opening is more solid, It's going to take a while to build on that. When I started to learn stuff more seriously about a year ago my rating went from 1000 to 800 and it is only recently that I've gone above 1100 in rapid. I've peaked at 1170. My rating is 1500 on Lichess, which uses a different rating system, I've played 800 games on there in the last year or so.

Principled play is the way to go, you just need to be patient. Keep at it.

My guess is that you are focusing on the principles and not focusing on "playing well".

Here is a game:

White blundered with 17. Ne2. Your g5 is the right move, and after 18. Bg3 you should just follow the principles and take the bishop (Nxg3), after which the e5 knight is unprotected and white loses a piece. At that level, even very simple chess can lead to winning a piece with no risk and no fancy tactics (even though this is a tactic, "removing the defender").

That actually makes a huge degree of sense. I've maybe been getting hung-up on the 'rules' and it's been blinding me to what I should actually be doing with the board in front of me. Thank you.

Seems fair. It is early days, it just was unexpected to me and caught me by surprise just how much worse my results were.

This list looks easy but it is not. I reorganized the list a bit. These five are given, you don’t need to consider them during the game:

• No Pre-Moves
• No Tactics
• No Gambits
• No Sacrifices
• Know how all the pieces move

This is top priority #1 (and the most difficult):

• Don’t hang free pieces – Take free pieces

These five can be conflicting in the game:

• Castle as soon as possible
• Control and move towards the center
• Capture pieces of equal or greater value whenever possible (avoid Q for 2R trade for now). Remember, pawns do not count as pieces
• Always attack a Bishop or Knight on g4/g5/b4/b5 with the a or h pawn immediately
• Make an escape square for the King once finished development

This one doesn’t conflict.

• Activate King in the endgame – Attack pawns

• Spend just as much time on moves as your opponent (or less) – Use your time to think, but don’t get low on time.

I looked at two of your games and annotated rigourously according to the set of rules by Chessbrah. At some points the rules are conflicting indeed, but I also think that consequently casling asap (!) and consequnetly trading pieces would give the set of rules more impact.

Thank you for the free analysis - it's much appreciated!

Yes, I think maybe I should think about my trades and castling (and endgame king activation) a little differently. and yes, 10 min seems too short (though chessbrah plays only 5 min games with these principles). I shifted to 10min after failing with 15 and 30, and considered it might be that this gave my opponent too much time.

I'll keep going with it a little while yet, but the more I lose the more tempting it becomes to just go back to playing with King's Gambit ...

My latest few games were a big improvement.

Maybe it's just luck, maybe something else. I don't think I was playing any differently, just seemed to best my opponents more readily by applying the same principles.

Time will tell.

I guess the huge key factor is who one's opponent is, lol

It does fluctuate. Just be ok with it.