One of my friends has an opponent in a USCF correspondence event whose OTB rating is 1000 points lower than his Correspondence rating (i.e., appx. 1000 vs. appx. 2000). The OTB rating is provisional, but it is very current. This differential strikes me as unusual but it may be more common than I think. Has anyone encountered this before? It would be out of place to accuse anyone of cheating on this fact alone, but it does have me wondering.
It doesn’t suprise me. In corrospondance chess, you can study the position all you want, and use anything you want other than chess engines to research a position.
I’d think for corrospondance players that have a large difference between their OTB and corrospondance rating (and this is just my opinion), that they’d have the most trouble with endgames.
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Opening: pretty much will be played by the book until someone decides to go out of the book, or the line is finished. -for obvious reasons, corrospondance chess players tend to try and avoid the most main line of an opening, which could easily lead to over 20 moves being played by the book.
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Middlegame: its not hard to research a middlegame, since every move either results in the players looking for a tactic, or strategic move. In OTB, the lack of time often (even for GM’s), results in them occasionally playing a move that they haven’t really been able to properly acertain if its a good move. -although at the GM level, they can often spot a drawish move or a move that limits the opponents tactical chances.
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Endgame: its harder to research engames, that stage often involves the most finesse to play well. The higher the OTB rating, the better a person will play the engame unless the player has spent a lot of time studying endgame play.
Again, this is just my opinion.
Also, many players (of weaker OTB rating), do much better if they can get out of the opening into the middlegame with a solid posiiton… thats another reason why many OTB players have a much higher corrospondance rating: they don’t give thier opponent an immediate advantage by playing a bad opening move. I’ve often lost games just because I’m not familiear with an opening and end up playing a seemingly reasonable move that my opponent exploits for an advantage. [I mostly play 10 minute games on FICS, so it isn’t like its a huge deal to me.] 
Re: “I’d think for corrospondance players that have a large difference between their OTB and corrospondance rating (and this is just my opinion), that they’d have the most trouble with endgames.”
Endgames aren’t that big of a deal in correspondence any more because use of tablebases is legal.
Just how extensive are the tablebases and where is your cut-off towards when an endgame starts? One OTB game last week was (white) K+2R+6P vs (black) K+R+B+N+4P, which was eventually won by white.
Clearly the absolute level of play in correspondence should improve for all the reasons listed in the first response to my post. However, it is not so clear that the relative performance should improve, since generally both players have the same constraints and resources at their disposal.
However, from my own experience I know that time control can have some impact on relative playing strength. For example, my relative playing strength is about 200 points lower when I play blitz (in absolute terms in is probably 500 or more points lower). Similarly, I know someone who plays about 1500 blitz but is very strong in correspondence. The reason is two-fold: (1) He makes good use of the legal computer tools at his disposal, and (2) He spends an inordinate amount of time on his correspondence moves. (One could argue that this last example answers my original query.)
That said, the difference between someone rated 1000 and 2000 is like night and day, irrespective of the two different time controls.
Thanks for the discussion.
Ahh, I didn’t know that. Still, endgames start well before there’s so few pieces on the board. It can often be difficult to distinguish between late middlegame and early endgame play.
I’m no expert, but seems like books on pawn play tend to highlight late middlegame and early endgame play, in which most major and minor pieces, and at least some pawns have been traded off. -Usually the book will have chapters devoted to pawn only positions, and other chapters with various other pieces are still in play along with pawns.
OTB and Corr are different games that use the same pieces. It’s been said many times on these forums that “rating does not equal understanding.” Nor does rating equal research skill. A 1000 OTB player could easily be 2000 CC.
I can personally attest to that. CC is a different mindset and different set of skills, and I was not prepared for that in my first CC effort. I’m class A in regular OTB and just finished my first CC email quad, playing against people with either no ratings at all (no OTB, no CC), or OTB fishcakes with no CC rating. My results (which include a loss and a few draws) are personally disappointing.