Research is a central pleasure of correspondence chess. Using opening books, databases, and both print and electronic versions of Chess Informant elevates my play in the short run and expands my over the board repertoire in the long run.
In the early 2000s, I made the switch from postcard to email for correspondence chess. Then, in 2003, I started playing on websites where move transmission was a matter of clicking and dragging a chess piece on a computer screen. Record keeping is handled by the website. Move transmission in this new form of correspondence chess differs enough from postcards and email, that many players no longer think of it as correspondence chess.
I learned a lot playing in a Spanish Opening thematic on the first of these websites that I joined. I scored a nice victory on the Black side of the Chigorin variation and also made my first efforts with the Marshall Attack.
The Study Regimen
Sitting at the table with a chess board and opening monograph and systematically working through the lines may be a worthwhile study technique. I am certain that is how many players learn their openings. That is also what I did in the late 1970s with Horowitz when I was supposed to be working on my high school homework. But, for me, such study is a rare activity.
My book study more often consists of working through entire games, such as those by Paul Morphy, or middle game books, or Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, a book that I have as both print and Kindle (see Pawn Endings Flash Cards).
On the other hand, all of my opening resources come out during some of my correspondence games. Last week when I logged into ChessWorld.net, I discovered that a new team match had begun, adding eight new games to my load. It is time to hit the books.
Against one opponent, I am trying a new line against the Tarrasch French that is recommended in both The Flexible French (2008) by Viktor Moskalenko, and The Modern French (2012) by Dejan Antic and Branimir Maksimovic. Using my ChessBase database, I located games in this line played by Moskalenko and by Antic. I am studying these games.
As I play through my correspondence games, I study the relevant portions of the opening lines in these books and others. I look up the positions in Chess Informant and examine some of the games. During one recent correspondence game, I went through every one of the more than one hundred games ever published in Informant that had reached the position I had at that moment. That work took the better part of a weekend. The game might have ended as a draw, but my opponent was banned for cheating and I won on time.
Sometimes I use Chess.com's Game Explorer or ChessBase to play the percentages, choosing lines that have scored well in the past for my side of the board. When I have the time, I look for lines that score well for my opponent, but that have a recent refutation in Informant or some other collection of annotated games. Knowing that many of my opponents use the same databases that I do, I try to beat them with better research.
