How good are CC players

For a long time I repeatedly said over here that the best players in the world are the the GM's who play OTB chess and, in a game without computers, not even the world correspondence champion has any chance against a 2650+, not to mention monsters like Topalov or Anand. And that is all because the superior chess understanding a GM has, which allows him or her to be on top, no matter the time control. Of course, unless they play against humans, not cyborgs.

Many people laughed and replied that I have no idea about chess and especially the great positional understanding a serious CC player achieves. I won't argue with that at all, and the purpose of this thread is to give you an example of another ignorant to laugh of:

http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews_js/js_system_world_champ_appr.html

An excerpt for the busy ones:

"My angst towards postal chess began when I read that many postal aficionados honestly felt that a postal World Champion would beat an over-the-board World Champion in a postal game. The postal caste never seemed to realize that their understanding of chess as a whole was so far below any over-the-board World Champion's as to make the argument virtually laughable."

I wish I knew that much about chess to laugh at Berliner, too

Well, if somebody says that 1. e4 is not a good opening and gives categorical evaluations for many early positions arising frequently at top-level GM play, it is laughable. It reminds me of Ouchita, who said that white is better after 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 :)

Silman is often unduly harsh in his reviews. Have you read Berliner's text? Does Silman's portrayal of his hubris seem accurate?

I don't have Berliner's book, I have a small sample of it and it made a powerful impression on me:

http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/102Samp.pdf

Page 3 of that sample is very interesting. This person has the impression that he is a giant and all the others are dwarfs! I don't have a database, but you could look up what is the main continuation in the position described on page 3? I can bet it's 0-0 and I can bet some "ignorant" super-gm's have played it :))

I'd like to point out that there are two basic skills to winning a CC game.

1)   How well you understand positions (evaluation skill).

2)  The skill of researching games and drawing from them.

It is obvious to me that OTB champs, or, the current OTB top 10 are at the highest level in both areas.  The have incredible evaluation ability and the only thing they do all day is research past games and study positions.  Do you think they read books and solve puzzles?  Are you kidding?  All they do is research and refine their evaluatoins.

There's no comparison to make, OTB champs, regardless of how massive or unlikable their egos are, would destroy CC champs.  IMO this is simply common sense.

Agreed.

The world champ in postal is from Norway, he stinks in OTB, I think that says it all.

Norway have many good postal players, but no one of those would have a chance against another norwegian kid... Do I have to name him?

You know, this  Christmas, I sat in the living room watching my two nephews argue:

Andy: "You know that Blue Power Ranger can kick Red Power Ranger's butt."

Richie: "No way. Red is tougher."

Andy: "You're so sttttuuuuupid! Blue Power Ranger has Jungle Fury. Your dumb Red only has Turbo."

Richie: "What?! Turbo beats Jungle Fury any day!"

Andy: "Oh piss off! Besides, my Jungle Fury is superglued to the Megazord... so what do you know."

It's like "de ja vu all over again" reading this thread.

 This post pretty much says it all and confirms my own belief concerning great otb vs postal players. Anyof the top 10 in otb chess today would destroy any top postal player of today. An otb match wouldnt be fair to the postal player because he would be slaughtered and not allowed to take days for moves and use his nice rybka set up. If the 2 played a postal match I am sure the elite otb GM would still win since he could also take days for moves and use Rybka as well. What postal player today would stand a prayer against an Anand, or Carlsen, or Topalov who is also using a powerful engine and taking days per move ?!   I think there arent any.   About Berliner ..... I read years ago that there was speculation that he got help from Fischer ( they were friends about that time ) in some of his games in which he won the WC in Correspondence.

While this may, or may not, be true its certainly something to consider...

Like your comment Reb. I'm in agreement, though I do believe that for us lesser mortals it's very much a case of 'horses for courses'. I used to be pretty good at congress and tournament chess, but my rating for quickplay events was a couple of hundred lower than my FIDE rating - it would appear to be pretty much the same scenario for CC, which I had never played until joining chess.com. I do find, however that the practise of this and the live chess is very useful for brushing away the cobwebs after nearly 20 years out of the game; and this I wish to do before I foray back into the arena of my forte next year. I figure I'll need perhaps only one event to refamiliarise myself with my preferred time-control before I can start to compete effectively (was gonna look for one here in Spain, but if you know of something coming up in Portugal April/May time I'd be thankful for the pointer)

The real point I'm trying to make is that I believe all chess-players have a psychological disposition towards one variant or another, but that the really top OTB players are so very good that they can adapt far more readily to different circumstances and time-controls. Long live OTB !!

As expected ... some people came with the old story that chess is not about knowledge, it's about having more time to analyze a game. The more time you have, the better you play. No prior knowledge is required, chess is all about number crunching.

Laughable! And, as one can see from Berliner's book, paranoic too. In fact, making categorical assertions like "1. e4 is inferior to 1.d4" he proves how limitted his chess knowledge is. I will also point out the contribution of CC players. How many lines are named after them or appeared first in CC games? How many good reference books were written by CC players? I fear that the answer in both cases is a big 0.

Generally the players who like's postal chess, is the players who never made it OTB, the hard trouth about postal, is that you only need around 2000 (fide) in playing strength and a expencive computer.

Many of the norwegians postal GM's is only arond 1800-2000 in the real life. Take away theyr big (deep blue) computer, and they would have little strength left.

Postal chess is mostly about who's bother to use a week on each move, letting the computer analyze, and chose the best lines (you have to stear the computer into the best lines)

I see nothing wrong in this, the postal player probably have fun, but I see no point in comparing postal with OTB.

-A good tip for OTB players, is to go trough some elite postal games, use what they have found, the level on those games is high!

 I agree that the otb champ would have an overwhelming advantage in otb. The faster time control and the CC champ not able to use his various "resources" for the game would spell doom for him and the greater chess  understanding of the otb champ would soon tell. However, the reverse is NOT true as the otb champ would be allowed to use days and a computer to aid him as well so the CC champ would enjoy no advantage at all. The simple truth of the matter is that an otb champion has deeper understanding of the game than a CC player.

There was the Berliner variation of the two knights defence but that is considered very bad these days

OTB champ wins in an OTB game for certain, and probably a CC game for certain as well.

However I wonder what happens to CC chess when Rybka 10 beats every single human/cyborg player on earth with relative ease.

 +1.  Kids!  Who cares who is tougher, real issue is who gets the Pink Power Ranger. 

Unknowest to many, the yellow power ranger is also of the fairer sex.

Oh, and the red Power Ranger is obviously superior.

I remember that, when advanced chess events took place (somewhere like 2000-2003, when computers were not as invincible as today), the best advanced chess players in the world were ... guess who? Kramnik and Anand. But this was not the main message of the review Silman made for that book. As I understood by reading it, he emphasizes the huge gap in understanding between an OTB GM and a CC player, be it the world CC champion. Therefore, it is unlikely that an unassisted correspondence player will produce, even with infinite time, games of a higher quality than those played between top GM's OTB.