Opponent breaking principles and winning

ok this question goes to more experienced players, masters and to ppl  around my actual lvl (1250 -1350 standard chess)

Have you ever played someone who deliberately ignores principles in the opening and still manages to beat you?

you know? ... i can't help feeling outraged when someone starts pushing pawns in the opening like there's no tomorrow and still manages to beat you.

ok... so maybe i have not followed IM david pruess advice, "do not underestimate your opponent"  but how can we manage to defeat a player like this?

first thing I thought was "ok, lets open some lines for my developed pieces"  but then I found my pieces where very constrained anyways and then some opponents catch up pretty quickly in development by doing several pawn threats so, what can i do? 

I think that if i can overcome this maybe my game will improve   importantly.

thank you

here's the example , im playing black

It would help if you showed us the game.

Chess principles are not absolute... you can break one of them in order to better follow a different one. For instance, in a certain position, you might move the same piece a few times in a row (ignoring development) in order to create a permanent weakness in the opponent's position.

Some openings involve many pawn moves in the beginning.  As blueemu says an example game would be helpful, and there are exceptions to every rule in chess.  e.g. in closed positions it's ok to fall behind in development.

Sometimes the best punishment of a poor opening is to just keep developing normally / keep making useful moves and they'll collapse under their own awkwardness.  At the other end of the spectrum you sometimes have to play very energetically / sharp lines to punish a poor opening.

Generally my opponents do follow opening principles. However, when they don't, I usually gain the upperhand.

You should know the opening that you play inside out, so that if they do do something unexpected, there is a large chance that they've made an inaccuracy. Furthermore, change your plans according to what they move. My best advice is to familiarize yourself with the different variations and ideas/concepts of the opening you play. Apart from that, experience will also help.

If your opponenet beats you without playing opening principles he is probably naturally a better player than you. Don't get offended by that - skill is far from permanent. The point is, your opponent probably ignores opening principles but knows tactics relatively well so still wins the game. He would be even better if he followed the principles. Following the principles is generally a good idea but should not be done absolutely. The better you get, the more intution you get about whether to follow one principle or another.

I think your opponents who don't follow principles are destinied to stay at about their current skill level.

You must do what is necessary when they break general principles or play irrationally..........

1) I will play with a plan from the start of a game and have a clear aim and direction of where I'm going and know why

2) I will develop all of my chess pieces to their natural squares and in a harmonious way so they work together as a well coordinated team

3) I will play with discipline and clear focus control my emotions and remain calm no matter what happens in the game

4) I won't bang pieces like my opponent (1 or 2 seconds) or make moves without considering their pro's and con's

5) I will not be initimated by my opponents park tactics or very early Queen moves that are illogical and just waste alot of time

i guess chess is like poker, when you do the expected the opponent will be prepared...

 I just love breaking the principles and yet winning. Play for the win is the main principle after all.

+1 

Believe it or not, similar positions have been reached between strong players (colors reversed).  In the caro there's a line that goes 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nf3 b5  I remember a story about Tal facing this for the first time OTB.  He thought for 20-30 minutes or something and the best he could find was a3 (which is the most common move by the way).  So sometimes it pays to spend 1 move to stop what your opponent is trying to do.  Notice after your opponent got to play b5 you will have to spend two more moves to redevelop the knight.

It's a difference if someone breaks principles erratically because they don't know better, or if they do it purposefully with a clear plan in mind which is justified by the position.

Opening principles are not written in stone, they are more like thumb rules.

A) Play against the chess.com computer on the "hard" (~1600) setting and take the Black pieces. The computer's opening book makes it play _bad_ openings. It will play one weak opening after another against you. However you will quickly discover that just because the opening is "bad" -- since you don't have accurate ideas for how to take advantage of this badness the computer quickly finds tactical points which can beat you. 

B) What can you do? Learn from your experience! You've already discovered through practical experience that simplistic "development" is inadequate and weak against better opponents. Believe it. Bad openings played with an alert eye to tactics and with coordinated attacking ideas driving them will beat bland "development" and tactical complacency all day long.

C) Does this mean throw out your ideas about development and the opening in chess?  No... but it does mean refine those ideas.The simplistic Ideas that got you to 1000 are inadequate for going further and will actually hold you back if you don't adjust, refine, improve, and augment them. (As IMpfren said, play better!)  So, instead of saying merely "oh, my N is developed -- developed is good" -- you want to have a more specific sense of what is happening in the opening. Is that the right square for the N, and is this the right moment for playing it?  

You want to understand, based on the position, where the good squares are for your pieces and where the good squares are for you opponents pieces. You want to get your pieces to the good squares in the least amount of moves while preventing your opponent from getting to his good squares efficiently. But to do this you must understand the pawn structure. You can't really know where the pieces belong without understanding what is happening with the pawns, on both sides. Except -- since this is the opening, the pawns are a work in progress, so you need to understand where the pawn structure is headed -- and simultaneously all the while  you should be constantly alert for tactical details and where the vulnerabilities are in your position and your opponents...

So, if you can see all that clearly -- you are at least a master! But don't despair -- one makes progress on this stuff incrementally. 

My overall point is -- until you are a fairly advanced chess player you lack the accuracy to punish bad openings and you shouldn't even think of a bad opening as anything more than a position you aren't familiar with -- in short, something rather dangerous! Play your best chess and if you play more accurately than your opponent you'll win -- if you do not, you won't. There is no magic formula. 

I think this is a good point to make.  You can only play the opening well when you have a good feel for the middlegame.  Otherwise (speaking for myself anyway) it's just a jumble of rules of thumb and memorized moves.

By the way I tried black vs the 1600 computer... got a totally = exchange slav and I was the one who left book first on move 9 lol.  Ok so I tried a new game and its first two moves were 1.b4 followed by 2.b5   So you're right but it doesn't always play crazy apparently.

I'm surprised you got a normal opening the first time out! They do happen, but pretty infrequently. I play those settings often. 

I thought it might be fun to post some openings against the 1600 java computer to show what I thought / what I did right / what I did wrong (1 win, 1 draw, 1 loss).  As JG27Pyth said, without accuracy/tactics you can't punish anything.  Don't know how useful the comments are... during the game I do try to think through things logically, but the most important thing that goes on during a game in a player's head is referencing patterns.  So I may say "oooh I take the d file" but I'm actually leaning on my experience where a similar position was useful to me in a different game.  What I do believe you can do though in the opening is keep tabs on the 4 center sqaures... don't let your opponent build up more than you.  If he is investing in 2 of them (say the e file or the dark ones) then stake your claim on the other two.  And of course keep developing. 

Maybe the most important lesson though is not to underestimate your opponent and don't underestimate the game.  Chess is hard!  Just because they played some bad moves in the beginning doesn't mean you can stop focusing and certainly doesn't mean you'll win.  Sometimes the way to convert the win is far from obvious.

Lol on the N fork in game 3... (I find the java engine is strong in those pawn promotion N v R positions in general...).  

Good games though... yeah my long blather about putting pieces on the right squares etc. ehhh it's all hot air -- I should stop trying to explain my wacky opening ideas in a paragraph, it's useless and absurd -- Pfren sums it up right -- play better *and don't miss tactics*  

Hah, thanks :)  Actually I wondered whether I should post it or not because I thought your description was good and maybe the games woudln't be very useful.  I especially liked mentioning you have to put your pieces on good squares... these examples didn't have one, but against humans who do odd openings often I'll think I'm punishing them, but because of 1 or 2 bad development moves I have to waste time re-deploying and poof, we're already equal or I may even be worse.

My chess instructor told me that when playing chess, an old saying applies: 'flatten your heart'. That is, don't let emotions get the better of you. This was in reply to a series of games I lost where my opponent was playing 1. b4 and pushing pawns all over the place - I got really annoyed that I should have to waste my time playing against this 'garbage' chess, and set out to refute my opponents obvious opening mistakes with aggression. I would find myself later with my tail between my legs as my early aggression ran out of steam to find myself in long term positional trouble nearly every time.

OK .. so first of all, sorry for not answering but I did'nt noticed I had comments XD , apparently i wasn't following them on my inbox. duh!

second, thank you for all your comments i have really enjoyed reading all of them some of them have made me laugh :) they all have been really helpfull.

many ppl have requested an example and I wil be giving it ASAP . I agree with some of you who said they can't really help me with abstract ideas so ill be posting a game in the next days ( maybe today) and to the rest who gave me abstract ideas, they still where helpfull so ty again :)

In chess the attacker wins. So sooner or later you'll have to do something with your better position. Tricky computers exploit that and force you to do something about their "bad" play. That usually involves tactics and that's what they want.