I'm not sure what exactly more or less does. I went with a 52 and 40 toothed set-up on my chainrings did I choose poorly??? My choice was based on what my bike came with originally. The original rings looked like shark fins and the chain was about a 1" and half too long. The dude at the bike shop said my bike was suffering from I think he said "chain lagg". I didn't understand at first what he meant. I ask how much mew cjainrings would be? His response was $75 for the 52 and he couldn't even find the 39t chainrings. As luck would have it a few days later an unwanted women's world sport came in on a trade. He sold it to me for what I thought wasn't great price $50. I wasn't thrilled with the price but it had a barely used 3 pc chrank. So I bought it. Even though it had a severe case of garage rash, dry rotted tires and a lot of cobb webs once I started taking it apart the parts I did keep cleaned up nicely. After the fact I found a bunch of used chainrings on ebay for about the same price I paid for the whole bike. My question is this the large rings ranged from 53-48 and the small rings from 42-36. Is more better or, is less better??? Not that I'm going to change what I already have but, what does it do?