What are your guidelines?

[phillip1882]

1. look for a move that feels right.
2. read 2 moves into the position.
3. ohh! shiny! must play that!

[Aphelion]

I suspect that the number of guidelines is inversely proportional to your strength. I also suspect that this is due to the fact that having guidelines is not the same as understanding them.

[daal]

I suspect that the number of guidelines is inversely proportional to your strength. I also suspect that this is due to the fact that having guidelines is not the same as understanding them.

It seems you're missing the point. The reason that some of us weaker players have guidelines is not to say that we understand these principles or to say that these are the most important principles, but rather because we've recognized the need to focus on certain aspects of the game that we've been neglecting. Stronger players don't need to remind themselves for example to think about whether a move is sente or not, but I do.

The reason I posted this is not to show some sort of road to victory, but rather to see what sort of issues players of different levels feel they need to remind themselves of. Hopefully we will all get to the stage where our main concern is how cool our moves look.

I also doubt that it's the case that stronger players have fewer guidelines - it's just that they don't need to remind themselves of them.

[SolarBear]

Mine is "don't suck" but I should get more specific, because recently I'm doing the very opposite.