When I was a teenager I did some chess tournaments. My rating sucked because I was a risky and undisciplined player, but I collected a whole bunch of wins against rated-and-qualified masters in the process.
Turns out that a lot of chess “masters” aren’t really masters, but rather just very well-versed in standard, orthodox play.
That’s a good point. I once read an article about a research study on how the human mind works when dealing with things that follow predictable patterns over time. They had 50 top chess players play games against 50 beginners, and the top players won every game. They then sat all the players down at chess boards with pieces arranged in a random fashion that didn’t come from a normal game in progress, and the top players lost quite a few games.