Correspondence chess: Why do people play so many games at a time?

@tpr said ^

In the ICCF World Championship Finals they play 14 games at a time.
https://www.iccf.com/event?id=107382

In the ICCF World Championship all participants are using engines, whereas on Lichess and Chess.com engines are prohibited. I played two ICCF games against a top opponent some time ago and spent 2 days on one game and 3 days on the other one. (Everything below 24 hours per move counts as zero days there.) It's not so difficult to play very fast in ICCF tournaments, where engine use is legal, fully accepted and widespead.

"on Lichess and Chess.com engines are prohibited"

• ICCF allows engines because it is impossible to patrol a prohibition for correspondence.

"2 days on one game and 3 days on the other one"

• The World Championship is average 5 days per move.
  Former World Champion Edwards said he never uses less than 2 days and often 10 days.
  The late World Champion Dronov called for a drastic reduction of time control to avoid all draws.

@tpr said ^

"on Lichess and Chess.com engines are prohibited"

• ICCF allows engines because it is impossible to patrol a prohibition for correspondence.

"2 days on one game and 3 days on the other one"

• The World Championship is average 5 days per move.
  Former World Champion Edwards said he never uses less than 2 days and often 10 days.
  The late World Champion Dronov called for a drastic reduction of time...

Yes the fact that engine use is borderline impossible to control in correspondence is bad, but at least on lichess and chess.com, I seem to find that my opponents 100% are not using engines. While this kind of relying on people not cheating because It does not help your chess skills and is immoral goes a long way, so far as I would say any correspondence chess game online I have ever played I believe my opponent was not using the engine to assist them, in an event such as the iccf world championship it is bound to happen anyway

Only real niggle I found with correspondence was people playing out completely lost endgames, i.e. big material advantage etc.

Interestingly I discovered a couple of days ago that on Chessiverse - where I play blitz against the Bots - the most popular game format is infinite for the human player, totally removing any time constraints. I kind of understand this as one of the reasons I play blitz so badly is that I seem to get triggered into a nervous condition the moment I start to play on-line, really strange as I have no such problem OTB nor funny enough when I play Bots with a 15|10 format. Worth noting that the Bots have not learnt to flag human players and resign fairly fast.

Maybe there is a subset of players who just don't like time constraints or flagging behaviours for that matter.

Serious thinking of giving correspondence another go as the games are far more memorable, I gave up playing on chessdotcom because I didn't think the time spent each game was worth it.

@tpr said ^

"on Lichess and Chess.com engines are prohibited"

• ICCF allows engines because it is impossible to patrol a prohibition for correspondence.

"2 days on one game and 3 days on the other one"

• The World Championship is average 5 days per move.
  Former World Champion Edwards said he never uses less than 2 days and often 10 days.
  The late World Champion Dronov called for a drastic reduction of time...

ICCF probably had no choice, as many titled OTB players play on ICCF as well, because there are prizes, leaderboards, titles and also some money events. Lichess organizes no correspondence tournaments, has no correspondence leaderboard, no titles and no prizes. A number of titled players is limited. Chess.com organizes tournaments, has a somewhat irrelevant leaderboard and one big event with a title and with money prizes for best blogs, videos, moves or games, but without prizes for best results. The pace in their tournament is so fast to finish the event within a year and to produce enough games (around 100 for the finalists) to determine who is who. In a majority of cases it's clear that the participants are honest, and they don't get banned. In some cases it's clear that someone is cheating, and those people get banned sooner or later. (Alas, sometimes only after qualifying far, thus depriving better players of their participation in the next round.) And there is also a group of players who are doing well, but it's not clear what to think about them. Obviously some of them are playing fair, while others are not. Some of those players get banned, while a majority stay there. My impression is that most of the bans which the website gives are justified even in this group. The question is how many players from that group are avoiding a ban.
In general, the more games are available, the bigger are the chances that you determine correctly who is who.

When I wrote that I can often guess correctly who is who, it wasn't just my impression. My peak corr. rating here was 2953, I achieved it without cheating and without playing better than many players rated above 2650, but well below 2950. Apart from chess strength, effective use of allowed sources (Lichess' opening books) and sheer luck, one of the main compounds of my success was that I was avoiding extremely suspect opponents, and mostly avoiding moderately suspect opponents as well, whereas many other high-rated players were making a lot of nearly flawless draws against each other. (And some of them subsequently got banned.) I was not avoiding those opponents to increase my rating, but it eventually also worked that way.
I was also avoiding slower opponents and haven't played so many corr. games here, so not playing someone usually doesn't mean that I would suspect that person.

@AlexiHarvey said ^

Only real niggle I found with correspondence was people playing out completely lost endgames, i.e. big material advantage etc.

Interestingly I discovered a couple of days ago that on Chessiverse - where I play blitz against the Bots - the most popular game format is infinite for the human player, totally removing any time constraints. I kind of understand this as one of the reasons I play blitz s...

Yes that is definitely the big downside for me, I often find myself playing games in correspondence where I am in a very winning position that drags out for a long time, and gets quite boring. An interesting thing I find, usually when talking to friends who play chess casually, is that lots of people like playing infinite time (or online, correspondence) not because they are going to spend 3 hours on each move, but because even though they may spend the same amount of time they would in a blitz game, there is no time pressure. This could probably help with what you are saying, and this is the case for many people who play correspondence, I assume paticularly the ones with a lot of games, because it is as if they are just playing chess without time constraints.

I have at times considered giving up playing chess games entirely and just doing puzzles. Correspondence has a high 'puzzling' element to it.

@GMILikeBlitz,

You've just reminded me of the another reason I gave up playing correspondence on chessdotcom. I noticed that approximately 10% of the players were getting banned and my stats were very suspicious - elo rating being considerably higher than blitz rating - thought it was just a matter of time before I joined the 10% as I saw nothing in my opponents' play to suggest any sort of cheating!

To me it's a reason not to play correspondence on LiChess. That said, you can't be banned on Chessiverse so would have an excellent backup, which wasn't the case before.

@bongcloudmaster41 said ^

is that lots of people like playing infinite time (or online, correspondence) not because they are going to spend 3 hours on each move, but because even though they may spend the same amount of time they would in a blitz game, there is no time pressure.

This is why I like correspondence. No time pressure.

@ILikeBlitz said ^

"on Lichess and Chess.com engines are prohibited"

• ICCF allows engines because it is impossible to patrol a prohibition for correspondence.

"2 days on one game and 3 days on the other one"

• The World Championship is average 5 days per move.
  Former World Champion Edwards said he never uses less than 2 days and often 10 days.
  The late W...

How do you tell if someone is suspicious? Is it when they have a very low non correspondence rating, or joined a few days ago?

@bongcloudmaster41 said ^
"How do you tell if someone is suspicious? Is it when they have a very low non correspondence rating, or joined a few days ago?"

Not necessarily, but it's often like that. Very big difference between blitz (or rapid) and correspondence ratings makes me nervous. Very big certainly doesn't mean 300 points, but 800 and more catches my attention. (As for the values between 400 and 800, it depends a lot on concrete cases. There are elder players who play few corr. games at once and take them seriously, not everyone likes blitz.)
Every account has sometimes been new, but I'm more comfortable when I play someone who has demonstrated the class also in other time controls than correspondence chess. Say, my account has some history, there is no discrepancy between my level in blitz, rapid and correspondence and no discrepancy between my OTB and online results, either. I'm a bit too slow (or too serious) for bullet, as I'm a middle-aged OTB player. I have some ups and downs, but it's normal. It's also normal that players have correspondence ratings hundreds points higher than other ratings here, the pools are different (with very few titled players playing corr. chess) and many strong players care little about their correspondence games and frequently lose on time. I also want to add that it's perfectly legitimate to play here corr. chess only, but personally I feel more comfortable playing against opponents who have other ratings as well. For correspondence ratings above 2600 (very strong) this perhaps makes sense, for much lower ratings there is absolutely no reason to avoid such opponents.