Opening explorer strategies

Who has specific strategies with the opening explorer (in correspondence chess only as opening explorer is not allowed in live)? Here are mine:

1) Play openings that you know. If you try to rely on opening explorer to play something you don't know you will be lost as soon as the game leaves the opening explorer. Don't rely on the opening explorer too much

2) When in doubt, main line. Main lines are the main ones for a reason - they are usually good/the best! If a move is not in the opening explorer at all (especially in the first few moves), it is often flawed in some way.

3) If you can play into a winning game by a super-GM, follow his/her moves usually until your opponent deviates in order to make your opponent find a new move. Think about how to refute your opponent's new move.

These are just a few principles, maybe not best. How do you like to use the opening explorer?

Lichess.org has the best database online.

This is a big topic for me since I spend some time every day perusing move databases. (I don't play correspondence games, and I don't look at any such aids when playing online, by the way.) Here is roughly what I do:

I play through the line that has the most popular moves to see how I like it. I avoid lines that seem too tactical, are too hard to understand, have too many choices of strong moves for the opponent, or whose statistics are too favorable for the opponent, unless there is a sufficiently compensating reason to choose such a line. (Sometimes there is.)

I make 50% the rough cutoff point for move consideration, meaning I ignore lines that are played less than 50% of the time by either side, unless there exists some compensating attribute, such as an unusually high rate of win or a move I often encounter in practice by man or machine. After playing through a few exemplary games from the top few move choices (of over 50% popularity) I choose the move that tends to generate positions or games I like the best, and I mark that move as "pt" (meaning "pro tem": for the time being) in my repertoire, with an accompanying reason for future reference.

The result is that I usually pick moves with #1 or #2 popularity. The main exceptions are moves that I've found to be unusually drawish: since I favor positions that are difficult for my opponent to win, even if it means I can't win either, I will put high priority on highly drawish moves. I've been known to dip down to the 8th most popular move to attain such positions. For players who favor tactical positions, the same method can be used (50% cutoff, sampling games, etc.), except substitute decisiveness for drawishness.

I'll see if I can post a screen snap of part of my repertoire to illustrate some of these practices of mine.

What happens when your opponent is also following a database like a robot? You could play (and I assume have played) entire games without making a single move yourself. That wouldn't even fall under the definition of playing chess. You might as well turn your engine on.

Nobody should have more than 700 points difference between their blitz and correspondence ratings. I always check my opponent's profile when I start a CC game. If I'm paired with somebody like you I abort the game.

One of the reasons I don't play correspondence chess.

Does making a mouseslip that's better than the intended move fall under the definition of playing chess?

There are a lot of #1 popular lines in opening explorer which are very bad errors.

Example, please

I believe in the past after