I don't play chess, like maybe once every few years at most, so I know nothing about the patterns. But I noticed that pros usually made moves that put their opponent in an equal or worse predicament than their own.

A friend who regularly played speed chess played against me, without time limit of course because that would've been a stomp. I used the simple principle I figured out above and was winning for most of the game.

I basically depth-first searched every single move (the game lasted nearly three hours though).

I only lost at the end because I got tired and stopped doing the exhausting search in my mind.

Nah, better equaliser is fisher random, where the starting position of pieces is random. This might not be even that hard, if the person can play good blind chess