Polishing an opening repertoire is essential for top chess players, who must have variations prepared to meet all the standard openings. Those may be selected on grounds of stylistic appeal or rarity, hoping to catch an opponent off-guard. There are standard responses in turn, and a well-prepared player will have counter-ideas locked and loaded. Vast trees of chess analysis are stored in databases on their laptops and swapped over the internet. If you have money, you can buy books or online courses in which grandmasters share their ideas. If you have time, you can turn on a powerful chess engine (such as Stockfish) and craft your own.
The problem is that putting it on your computer is not the same as putting it between your ears. Chess players are like children at a buffet: we see all that mouth-watering knowledge and pile it high, only to find that such heaps of data can never be digested.
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