Amateur chess mistakes, how to exploit it

I have tried a few books about opening theories. Even though they supposedly claim to be useful for amateurs and novices, I have come to the conclusion that most of them dont give you much help in practical playing.

The problem is.. the books lines up maybe the 8-10 most used and probably best answers to a specific opening and goes through the chess moves in the respective directions. However, an amateur seldom follow these lines very deep, simply because he dont know all the theory.

Yes the move migth be a mistake and be a catastroph if playing against a 2000 rated player. But likewise the amateur on the other side of the chessboard often will not recognize the mistake and know how to punish it.

I have yet to see a chess book focusing on this. They all asume the opponent will respond as Kasparov or Kramnik through a dozen moves, but that’s not real life.

Ask yourself after every move: Why is this move bad, what weaknesses does it make, and how can I "disprove it"? If you can't, it is not a bad move.

Also note that "When in doubt, get peices out" is very good if you don't know what to do.

Good points. You're of course right about that. Reading books I tend to get hung up on finding the researched alternatives when all I should do in these situations is to just play chess.