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Nigel Short's patronising attack on correspondence chess in <New in Chess>

Nigel Short enjoys attacks in his texts. His latest effort - absolute nonsense - to be found in the latest 'New in Chess' (2018.2). He ignores the fact that many thousands of ppl here and at the ICCF enjoy it. What more justification need there be? But it is also a sphere where chess opening theory is refined to the highest human level.
He talks obviously of engine-assisted correspondence chess which died long ago but hasn't been buried yet. Although harsh he's rather right than not. The focus nowadays is more and more on short time periods.

I won some corr. tournaments from 2000-2004 only to find out that I was a slave to my machines and didn't understand anything. I quit long ago, good riddance. Don't get me wrong, analysing with engines can be very useful indeed.

PS: I mentioned the corr-GM who lost a match against top engines although he used a modest one himself? And that was 12 years ago.
GM Jan Gustaffson in one his opening clinics (on youtube) says he always consults CC games to get ideas for opening analysis.
Short doesn't like CC; so what. If ppl want to do it, what is his problem?
While Short boasts of his huge #carbon footprint in New in Chess eg solo passenger on commercial flights in Africa, #CC reflects 21stC zeitgeist; it has zero carbon footprint. Maybe he should reflect on that? or is he a climate change denier?
Well, I'm not so convinced that engine-assisted correspondence is even dead yet.

It's a lot different than it used to be, for sure, but it's still the case that against the top correspondence players you will have a minus score (not a large minus score, to be certain, but minus nonetheless) if you just let the engine run for the allotted time.

The human still has valuable input to provide; the nature of that input is different, where it's more about knowing ways to optimize the use of the available tools in the given time, including knowing the shortcomings of the engine(s) used for analysis, etc.

That's the thing that's so different from ages past. Even when engines were getting seriously strong by OTB standards, in correspondence it used to be the case that strong human players' knowledge of chess itself was a substantial addition.

Now the most valuable input from humans is more related to the methodology of analysis than the subject matter itself (chess).

It's not everyone's cup of tea, but those people don't have to play :)
That's an excellent elucidation / defence of CC: your phrase 'methodology of analysis' - that very good.
And whatever the machines offer, it is still a human being who has to choose between the various possibilities. As you indicate, it is a new development, something that has never been done before in the hundreds of years of chess.
BTW Nigel Short (@nigelshortchess)himself has been criticising me on Twitter with IMO contradictory and ill-conceived messages.
Nigel Short is a British National Treasure. If he says Correspondence chess is dead then I believe him, for he is an honourable man.

Perhaps a GM who came within a hair's breadth of being world champ might know a little bit more about chess than you. People need to start treating Sir Nigel Short with more respect.
@NeverBeenTimid Quite often a great player can make comments that are not on the same level as their play. Note that the greatest tennis and football players rarely if ever become the greatest coaches and managers. So Nigel Short may well be due much respect for his playing history, less so for his opinions on the game.

I personally played corr chess some thirty years ago. At the time it was considered cheating to use computers. Now it's acceptable to use them, it makes corr chess unplayable for us traditionalists. A pity. (Still prefer descriptive notation. All this a6, g4 stuff seems awfully dry. P-K4, Q-Kt5 ch!, great days...)
There's an aspect you touched on @TGluckman that I think is important. Like Gustaffson I also find correspondence games to be an excellent reference, especially in my own correspondence games (on lichess, not engine assisted). In a funny way, it can sometimes come across to me as cheating because you have 100% certainty that the game in question was analyzed by a computer.

Imagine this scenario: you're playing an unassisted correspondence game as white and a dozen moves in you're at a crossroads. Two moves have been played in practice, one in correspondence, the other in a tournament over the board between two GM's. If I use the GM game as a reference (especially if I just look at the game result blindly) and follow it move-by-move until my opponent deviates, I may be falling into a trap. White's move in question might not have been something the player anticipated or had analyzed at home.

Now let's say I look at the correspondence game as a reference. I know that the move any 2000+ CC player chose would be fully vetted by an engine. I also know that the opposite side is playing with an engine and is likely to be playing similarly strong moves. This tells me two things:

1. I know the line an engine prefers to play as white (with a human's assistance to spot the engine's occasional positional blindness).
2. I know the best line for black, at least insofar as a player operating a computer can use it.

Both of these are huge competitive advantages. First, I can follow the machine's suggestions as long as I need. Second, I have certainty that when my opponent deviates they may be blundering or making a mistake. At the very least, I know that the computer would respond with a move that would increase its advantage. It's like knowing that you need to spot an "only move" in a chess puzzle -- it makes it a lot easier to solve the puzzle.

GM's score some great wins, but they're always doing it against humans and both sides can blunder. Without knowing if they've computer-checked any line we look at, it's never safe to say they were familiar with the position or didn't walk into a trap.

All this is to say that using high-level CC game databases to play your own CC games without engine assistance seems about as close to cheating as you can get without crossing the line and actually using your own engine.

There have been some excellent defences of CC above; they show the CC has evolved to a very high level of chess culture that is quite different to anything else in the sphere of human existence.
I shall quote from the above when I email 'New in Chess' and explain why there needs to be an adequate response from sb supporting CC.
There are also q.s to do with ppl who have mobility challenges, live in isolated places, have challenging work regimes who would find no other way to play chess than CC - at a high level or not / with or without machine support. Short hasn't noticed them.
Unfortunately as we can see from some of the above comments, 'national treasure' Short's comments are likely to resonate with some.
At the weekend I exchanged some tweets with an irritated Nigel Short, and what struck me is that his thinking is not very clear - he writes before thinking. He made some clearly contradictory comments which reveals some possible deficits in his education. Wikipedia says he became a GM aged 19 and not surprisingly he followed his great talent rather than study. So he comes over as a force of nature with very strong opinions based on unreflected assumptions. His strength is his weakness - so is the man!
Kasparov did not respect Nigel Short that much: "My opponent will be Short and the match will be short."

Before chess engines, top correspondence players used to consult with human players, always keen to show their games in progress to strong human players and ask for ideas. In the end the correspondence players himself decided on his move and lived with all consequences for months. So it is the same as it was.

Of course correspondence has merits for those who because of work, physical impairment, weak nerves... cannot play over the board.

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