Learning to punish bad opening moves

There are lots of moves that aren't "book," or even good, but that you can't immediately punish. You just have to make good moves and try to increase your advantage. And remain tactically alert! That's much more important than anything else!

forget books and learn to tinker with engines and databases. You will get a pretty good idea of things this way without being spoon-fed information.

Engines and databases can't tell you about opening principles. Or basic rules of positional playing. You only can learn it from a teacher, a book or those lessons here on chess.com.

I'm not a "NM" but I dare to say that this is one of the most silly advises I've ever read. 

this is a complete myth. This is like saying a math proof in a book is incorrect because the author didnt make every step of a proof explicit.

if i show you sideline X scores like 65% whereas everything else scores reasonably the same you can dig deep into a database to see if there is a trap or some bad position and then see some master games to explore why the positions score so badly. Likewise, engines dont just spew out an analysis , they also offer alternative moves of which you can contrast and punish your own ideas if you disagree with their analysis.

i swear people, dont know how to use the resources available to them and want every cogitation masticated for them. Do the extra syllables raise your chess self esteem?

i would venture to speculate why these kinds of opinions are so predominant is because chess coaching as an industry heavily depends on methods that in the past where optimal but now get to bask on their previous reputation unchallenged. 

Lol, I have never read a book or had a coach, you do not need to give away all your money to learn what you can learn from free by doing puzzles, analysing and playing games.

I'll second the database + engine advice. I built my repertoire this way, and like darkunorthodox says, what's nice is you're free to choose lines and plans that are appealing or make sense to you. With a book you're essentially forced to pick one of the lines the author chooses (and sometimes they don't give you an option).

Of course if you don't have much experience in chess, then you can't choose a line based on liking or understanding the underlying strategic themes... but frankly, if that's the case, then you don't need to worry about a full opening repertoire anyway (of course you should know some openings, but a full blown repertoire is not an efficient use of your time).

I third this.

dont get me wrong, books have their place, esp when it comes to endgames where humans need to rely more on teleological principles than brute force so often, but esp when it comes to middlegames, there is so much you can learn from osmosis and databases do a lot of the heavy lifting on the opening for you. (Although it should also be triangulated with the engine just to make sure). You also need to know that evals are not created equal. a 0.6 is some messy hypermodern defense is not the same thing as a 0.6 in an  expedited endgame position where one side has a wrecked pawn structure and while the defender can in theory hold, he can only play for two results.

if you can pay a coach and money is no problem by all  means get an encyclopedia of books and fork $30 an hour for some tailored easily digested material for you but to me thats like ordering lab shoes to run in the park. If you are not at least 2000, you shoudnt need all this stuff. Better to cut the umbilical cord of needing all of this and get crafty. Even if you decide to get a coach when you are better your improved ability to extract tabiyas out of positions you are exposed to, will mean a coach can focus on your real weaknesses when the time is right

Actually, the whole point of a math proof is to demonstrate how you can get from a to b via c. If you don't make every step explicit it's not a proof at all. You only can leave out trivial things like a²+b²=c² equals a²=c²-b². 

Aside of this "little" inaccuracy I don't see what your analogy has to do with my original posting. 

Furthermore, you wrote »forget books« in #23 and »dont get me wrong, books have their place« in #30. Both statements don't fit very well together. 

Now it's my turn to say "don't get me wrong". Please forgive me if my first statement was a little aggressive calling your advise "silly", that's because you were denying book knowledge of having any use in general. By no means I wanted to speak against  'tinkering with engines and databases', I just  wanted to point out this can't replace opening principles and positional guidelines.

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