Curious as to opionions on this, especially from long-time coorespondence players.  Do you think the ability to move the pieces in coorespondence is a crutch or a help in later over the board play?

I analyze positions mostly using my eyes and visualization because being a good OTB player is more important to me than being a good correspondence player. If you skip that step of visualization, you're not improving  that skill, which matters over the board. If you look at the analysis board only after you've already visualized as much as you can in your mind then perhaps you're practicing OTB and correspondence skills at the same time. But then, I'm not a long-time correspondence player. Let's see what others say. :)

likesforests wrote:

I analyze positions mostly using my eyes and visualization because being a good OTB player is more important to me than being a good correspondence player. If you skip that step of visualization, you're not improving  that skill, which matters over the board. If you look at the analysis board only after you've already visualized as much as you can in your mind then perhaps you're practicing OTB and correspondence skills at the same time. But then, I'm not a long-time correspondence player. Let's see what others say. :)

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Totally agree.  Use it to check (or build on) the work you do first in your head, and it shouldn't stunt your OTB visualization.

up to about four or five moves, visualization.   anything past that, normally analysis board.