The same way I can read and study 100 books on surgical procedures, and be a bad surgeon. Or I can read 100 books on basketball, and be a bad basketball player.
Practice makes perfect, not reading.
How can someone own 100 books, and still not be an expert?
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I believe when this happens it is because the player has put so much trust into the openings and opening principles that he looks at his own position without analysing the opponent's position and possible moves.
People that over-study yet don't focus enough on the game tend to blunder a lot. If you are the person you are describing, try spending a little more time on your moves, instead of just playing intuitively.
Hope it helps!
FTP.
The same way someone can own a 100 golf clubs and still suck at golf. Its what you DO that makes you better, not what you read.
I only own 25 books, and read 4 of them. They helped my strength significantly, especially pandolfini's chessercizes checkmate, which has 300 good checkmate puzzles.
My comment was about some people I read saying they had a 1000 book library, yet were rated 1700. I wonder why they are not experts already.
Aug 14, 2011
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#6
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There is a myriad of answers to the question. For one, are the books being read and applied? Two, I believe there are a number of different ways to learn and some people may gain little from reading but would pick up 100% of the information if shown examples even one time. Anyway, I shouldn't take time answering any further because literally there are probably a million variables that could affect the situation. Heck, for all I know the person that owns and hopefully has studied these 100 books may have just had a lobotomy or been given some heavy sedatives they have to live on. Main thing, there is no direct cause and effect between owning some books and being an expert in something. While there may be a correlation between time spent studying/ practicing, there will always statistically be the average that fit the correlation and the anomalies that either became experts in record time or took a real beating from the books before anything sunk in.
Aug 14, 2011
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#7
After submitting my answer I see you put extra information. In that case, I guess there are a couple things I can think of. One, some people enjoy learning the history and information but don't have an inner drive or need to have some certain rating level. That's one thing I guess I've seen even with the little bit of experience I have. The other thing, there are plenty of people that just enjoy chess for playing some simple games and don't want to stress themselves out to push themselves to the next level but don't mind perusing a stack of chess books in the meantime. LOL The other thing which I don't want to start a debate on but there are people that it appears to me are naturals at the game. One I can think of said he really gets bored with the theory & such and felt that he did better playing a lot of games and learning from each one what needed to be learned so that the next time they didn't repeat the same blunder. Maybe he was lying though. I don't know for sure. Only he knows if he's 8u11541tt12g everyone which leads to my next wondering of whether some people could perhaps <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->exaggerate. I know. It's a stretch but... LOL
They don't read them?
They read the wrong type/ level of books?
The books are poor quality?
They read many good books, but missed a few crucial topics?
They read them, but did not study them enough to fully learn them?
Book studying just is not enough. They need to do more?