Why play turn-based?

When I am suspicious concerning foul play in live chess, it is nearly always true that my opponent does not play turn-based, or has a much lower rating at turn-based.

I wonder if this site scrutinizes turn-based with greater vigor in the quest to weed out the cheats?

Thanks for all the responses. I'm new to this site and to online chess in general.

I guess having tournaments would be a good reason to do turn-based.

LOL at all you people saying you don't have time for live chess. I only suggested playing really long games because I thought you were actually taking a long time to think out your moves in turn-based. I've only played 15/0 and 10/10 games on here, which apparently count as Long. Surely you can find some 2-hour block in your week to hammer out 5 or so games.

Some of you have also said that you are worried about cheating on live chess. How can you possibly be more worried about cheating under time controls? If somebody wants to an engine, what's to stop them in turn-based? At least in live, it ends after maybe 15 minutes rather than drawing out over several days.

I also think it is dumb to use opening book when you play. How does it benefit your play to have every book line spelled out for you? You can play whatever openings you want without understanding them at all.

And some of you said that you avoid live because you are bad at tactics. Well chess, imo, is supposed to be a game of mental calculation. Sure, you can do better if you're allowed to move around the pieces to plan ahead, but this sorta defeats the point of chess.

You seem to have a few misconceptions.

First, 10 or 15 minute games are considered "long"??? This is part of why I don't play live chess on this site. Most of my "real time" games, either OTB or on other sites, are at least an hour per player, usually more. In USCF tourneys, I sometimes get into time trouble in games where each player has 75 minutes. So finding time to block off 2-3 hours for a single game of chess is sometimes difficult. With turn based, I can spend 5 minutes thinking about each move, but I don't need to play the whole game at once. That's not to say that I don't play the occasional blitz, but that only takes 10-20 minutes per game, which is easier to find time for.

I agree with you about the cheating. In correspondence (turn based) chess, you'd think it would be more common. I'm not worried about it, though. I don't play turn based very often, and I do it mostly to learn, so getting creamed by the occasional computer player and learning from the experience is ok with me. I prefer playing humans, which most of my opponents are, so it works out.

The opening book/database debate has been done to death. In fact, I think it's a chess.com rule that a new debate on this subject has to be started every single day, or the site will crash. Go search for one of those threads. My opinion on the subject is already in this thread.

As for tactics in turn based, I try to figure everything out in my head, but since I can, I also like to double check myself using the analysis board. I find that the combination is better for improving my calculation ability than either one alone. It's the same way I figure out everything in my head in OTB games, then review the game after it's over and move stuff around to see where my mistakes were. Just in this situation, I'm doing the double checking before making the move.

--Fromper

I can find time from time to time, but when I can't, on-line chess is a good alternative. I do play live chess occassionally, but not nearly as often as I used to.

If that's a reference to my comment, I didn't say I was bad at tactics. I said I had a poor rating on tactics trainer here because of the time limit. I said that to illustrate why I prefer not to be rushed.

You seem to be anoyed by people prefering to play correspondence chess.. People have been playing it for years. They used to do it via mail, and still do. I can play it on my iphone. Browse over a position at my leisure. Why does that bother you so much?

Games longer 15 minutes or longer are considered 'standard' and that is in accordance with FIDE rules. I play in Live Chess not turn-based because 1. I think that in turn-based there is more cheating and 2. I don't like the idea of dragging a game for months, let's sit down and finish it, then do something else.

To add to my comment. I said I like to browse at my leisure on my iphone. Well, as I understand it you can only play turn-based games on your iphone. I ended up here because I downloaded the iphone app and only play games on my iphone.

I am quite certain that is false.

If anything, high bullet or blitz rating in Live Chess would probably suggest that someone does not cheat since it is much more difficult to do this on fast time controls. Also, in Live Chess you almost always have moderators or stuff who can be approached, and you have people observing games. To suggest that online chess where using electronic databases and analysis board during the game is actually allowed should be the most reliable criterion seems completely nebulous to me.

"That" could refer to at least three possible antecedents:

1. You are correct that you misidentified an example of the post-hoc fallacy as a syllogism.

2. You are wrong that I am not more suspicious of cheating during turn-based chess. I think there is more cheating there, and indeed, Chess.com catches many.

3. You might be right that they do not exercise more vigor in pursuing turn-based cheaters than live. They might go after both with equal vigor.

The point I was getting at, but did not express clearly, is that when players make egregious tactical blunders with three days per move and an analysis board to boot, then play what seems almost perfect chess, I grow suspicious.

However, when I am suspicious, I do not make accusations. Rather, I run engine analysis on the game. Most of the time, my suspicions are due to my own horrendous play (I was having a bad day). In perhaps 10% of the cases where my suspicions have been aroused, further investigation is needed. As I have time, I may do this investigation. If I continue in my suspicions, I submit an abuse report.

After this additional investigation, cheating appears to be rare, but not more rare in live than turn-based.

A few posters her have intimated that cheating should be more common in turn-based than live. I think they are wrong. At all time controls slower than three minutes, and all that have an increment, cheating (with the method displayed on YouTube) would seem ridiculously easy.

*They might but I think they are more likely to catch cheaters in Live Chess than in Online.

I can see more of the game if it's turn based.  I think I learn more about Chess this way.  The mistakes I make are glaring at me for days on end so I don't forget them.

I can look at a game I played 5 years ago and remember it.  The game becomes like a pet project.  

It's just studying the game, which I enjoy.  Today I spent around 2 hours looking at 10 different games I'm playing, doing this for a long time has had a negative effect on my OTB and online games but I feel that is something I can fix.

Playing online Chess is fun but I feel I'm playing 2 games, having to watch the clock just annoys me.   

Like saying the beach is for only one activity. Enjoying surfing, or laying out, or drinking a beer and watching people, or playing volleyball; they are all fun at the beach. Chess is the same. So many facets of enjoyment that trying to rank their value is silly. I like to play a live 10 min game everynow and then, like a pop quiz at school to stay nimble, maybe a 5 day per move game like taking a nice essay test, where you really get to explain yourself, and then a 10 game simul tournament at 2-3 days per move all going at the same time to keep a move going at all times. This would be a multiple choice test, or maybe I just like challenging myself and get pleasures in many ways from many sources.

Because there are more to catch.

You're still missing the whole point concerning my suspicions. Everyone has suspicions sometime concerning their opponents in online play. Only a fraction of such suspicions prove merited, the rest stem from self-delusions, paranoia, bad judgement, et cetera. I shared one of my recurring instances of bad judgement: at least we're agreed it was not a syllogism.

We all need self-criticism in our suspicions about foul behavior by others. We also need a sensible way to address our suspicions when they occur.

The original poster asked why turn-based chess merits attention. Many reasons have been offered. Suspicions of cheating in turn-based do not warrant pause, for it is no more likely in turn-based than any other form of online play.

I only play long (usually 30|3) live chess, because I am trying to simulate OTB conditions as closely as possible before I venture out into the club and tournament scene. 

However, I can definitely understand the appeal of turn-based chess.  In fact, turn-based is usually the only way I play chess variants and Asian chess.  To me it is a good way to learn games like this that I will never be playing under tournament conditions.  If I become sufficiently skilled in shogi or xiangqi, for example, I might try playing them in real time online.

Amy

 I think turn based chess is very useful for OTB chess too. You go deep in positions and discover very interesting things in there.

OK, so I've been looking at people's profiles and apparently most of you do play both turn-based and live. It just appeared that everybody played turn-based because everybody's highest rating is in turn-based. Now, why is that the case?

People typically have a turn-based rating ~300 points higher than their live rating. I have even seen a couple people rated 1800+ on correspondance who are losing to players rated ~1000 on live (and playing horribly in those games too). How do you explain this? Is inflation of your rating one of the reasons you prefer turn-based?

 No. If we get picky for a moment, it's not "inflation". They are different types of games, so they have separate ratings. I'm the worst case I know about this (rating difference between different time controls), I just happen to suck at blitz, but that's not the reason I like turn-based chess.

I'm with the school of "chess truth" (Kramnik & Smyslov) rather than school of "practical chess" (Kasparov & Topalov), and I don't like relying on 5 seconds of guess work when I play chess.

I feel turn-based players are more serious about improving as they have patience to wait for 2 or 3 days for opponents to move. They put in extra time for each move, which is available. That explains rating inflation.