While waiting

Just curious.  How do some of you occupy time in between moves of your opponent (correspondence chess).  Say you normally have a 3-day time on the game, but because both of you are online the game is moving faster. Still you have no real time pressure.  You really don't know if the guy or gal is coming back.... Do you do chess-related things or do you jump back into real ife for a while?

Forums!

Just the perfect thing here. ;)

Yeah, that would be my first choice and sometimes is.  Too often I find myself getting a few more dishes washed or making snacks.  I like to watch TV but I think it hurts my focus during games. 

Add a few more games. It is tricky finding just the right number of games so that you always have a move to make, but not so many as to not remember a game when you come back to it. 

Yeah.  I cannot seem to achieve that balance though...  can't predict the style of a stranger, and there seems to be an inverse correlation for me between the number of games and my success.  Just chicken, I guess.

How about tactics trainer or chess mentor while waiting? You might just bump into a situation that mirrors what's going on in your game. Then you have a leg up, and it's not cheating by any stretch of the imagination.

What about playing some rapid games?

The few rapid games I attempted were interrupted by real-life issues.  I couldn't count on ten minutes  of quiet so I did really poorly on those.  Plus I would need to reeducate myself on the rules and logistics for rapid games.  Lazy plays a role in that.  I do tactics trainer but without timers for those same reasons.  Thanks for the comments!

I agree with Muhammad, but you face the risk of forgetting everything about chess here...

Isn't Chess part of "real life"? I am retired so you would think I would have loads of time to spend with the game, but I do not. So I limit myself to 4 or 5 three day move games. When I was a member years ago I had 50 or more games going at a time. It was way too much. I occupy my time between moves with every day tasks and projects. Maintaining our three acres of land, reading "The Sword of Truth" series of books, building a barn, honey-do list things, etc., and generally just enjoying life.

Read chess news, check emails, browse travel websites and drink coffee or tea.

online chess is correctly known as correspondence chess. The internet has taken the post office out of the equation. Correspondence chess has fallen way back from its pure form since its been possible to play it on the internet.

Correspondence Chess is not a substitute for over the board chess where if your opponent happens to be online, you can rattle off 10 or 20 moves in a day. It's a place where you should be taking several hours on your moves.

It's a way to learn to play openings correctly by looking them up in books and databases. It's a way to hone your analytical skills.

It's a way to learn endgames, because books are allowed.

A lot of players don't even know you may take notes and move the pieces around on a separate chess board.

I owe my master title to playing correspondence chess in the 1980's because I learned the right way, as explained above. My free video lessons course on YouTube explains how. I have a playlist with 157 boards covered in a recent team match my video lessons group just played. We have over 9,000 members in this group, so my methods must be doing something right! It's linked in my profile if you wish to join.