[Skybird]

How can reading chess books be considered as cheating?

Many novices at young age do make a big mistake. They think the most intersting part of a match is the opening, and so they start learning chess openings. But they learn them like a tape recorder records music, they do not understand them. So they sit down during the next match, and try to play down the sequence of moves they just have learned.

and then their oppenent throws in a move they have not learned, and all of a sudden they are in trouble, and mess it up. Because now they have to think of their own moves, instead of blindly copying that sequence. since they never have understood what the idea behind this or that opening system is, they violate it's inherent strategic ideas, or give up the potential that they - unknowingly - had build up before.

No, they had not cheated you, Jumpy. No matter how limited their and your abilities were: at that popint of time they just were better prepared than you, that is all!

In tournament chess, sometimes even the first twenty moves of both sides are being played by the books, eventually. Two opponents may copy the complete first half of a match that they did in the past, until one adds a new move of which he thinks it is the better move than that he made back then and that costed him the match.

That's why theory fills whole encyclopedias nowadays. reading chess book is no cheating. It's part of the training, to be better prepared.