My own experience mirrors that of the contributors above. I am more likely to forget to look at a game for a few days (or have an opponent forget) than to encounter someone who cheats. It is a great way to do some in-depth opening study. But also it's great to have the time to deeply study any position that needs it. As one friend of mine put it, "Sometimes I just want to get to the heart of the position"
The bigger issue is that completing an all-play-all event can take a looooong time. It requires a pretty solid commitment, a lot of time and patience. Which is why I drift away from it. Maybe it's time I got back into it.
@verylate said in #11:
> The bigger issue is that completing an all-play-all event can take a looooong time.
As long as the longest game takes. You can play all games in parallel (that was the case in the tournament I played). Wouldn't work for a swiss system tournament, of course.
@mkubecek said in #12:
> As long as the longest game takes.
Agreed. I should have added that if the tournament is a qualifying event for another tournament, then it is possible that half the players in the second, subsequent event will have withdrawn before it starts because they are tired of waiting for your game to finish. It has happened.
As others have pointed out, correspondence on lichess is quite different from the "official" correspondence chess, where you can use everything you want, and the stronger players often have multiple high-end computers running 24/7. These days it is extremely rare to find a non-draw game at the top level.
On lichess, games shall be played between humans. If you sometimes want to think longer about a move or don't want to invest time for a classical game, this is a valid alternative. You can use all your chess books, and even the opening browser on the analysis is enabled. To find good moves takes a bit more work though than just playing the move with the highest statistics all the time.
Obviously there are some areas that are not clearly defined, but I think one can work out how it is meant to be played. For example, I consider browsing your Chessable course ok (as it works like a book), but you absolutely have to refrain from running the engine in any position. Engine help is limited to moves, but evaluations as well.
You might look up your endgame in Dvoretsky's EM, but you may not query endgame tablebases.
I have recently started playing some corr games here and try to get some more knowledge of openings and middle game ideas, and make sure to not blunder anything away directly. So far, the accuracy is much higher than in the other time controls (as expected), but sometimes I still make dubious decisions.
And you can always move the pieces before you make a decision, so this alone should make things way better. But in order to use it to learn, always use your head first. :-)
If you want to be sure use "Zen" Mode
@CagnusMarlsenStudy said in #1:
> Hi, I'm actually wandering how does correspondence game actually work? How can I be sure that my opponent isn't cheating or studying the opening while we are playing the game? Maybe I'm just paranoid but I don't see the point of playing correspondence online...
You can never really be sure. Cheating in correspondence is a thing, but timeouts are a bigger issue I think. People with multiple timeouts tend to have (unintentionally) sandbagged ratings too. I really enjoy correspondence, but I tend to limit my involvement to playing in (and running) tournaments with teams where I know most (but not all) of the players that I am playing against. It will never totally eliminate the risk, but I just play and enjoy it and try not to worry about that aspect too much. I think I have reported more people for suspected engine use in shorter time controls such as rapid, blitz etc. than in online correspondence chess. My advice is to play and don't worry but maybe try to find teams that run correspondence tourneys because you can encounter anything in the lobby.
As others have mentioned correspondence is great for learning openings. As someone who gets interrupted often I find it is a good choice since I can wait until I have time to consider a move. Even though I have a whole day to make my move I usually only put 5-10 minutes into a move, so games usually go pretty "quickly". Based on the number of blunders I see, I doubt people are using engines, but they are using opening books. The only annoying thing is when players are in a lost position and they don't move or resign. I just block them.
@SummerThereof said in #17:
> As others have mentioned correspondence is great for learning openings. As someone who gets interrupted often I find it is a good choice since I can wait until I have time to consider a move. Even though I have a whole day to make my move I usually only put 5-10 minutes into a move, so games usually go pretty "quickly". Based on the number of blunders I see, I doubt people are using engines, but they are using opening books. The only annoying thing is when players are in a lost position and they don't move or resign. I just block them.
That will teach them or not.
@justme23 said in #18:
> That will teach them or not.
It's not a matter of getting back at them. It's just a matter of not having to deal with them anymore.
@SummerThereof said in #19:
> It's not a matter of getting back at them. It's just a matter of not having to deal with them anymore.
Oh really just don't answer there seeks.
