Can a 1800 beat a 2700 in Correspondence Chess

Oh man the trigger is real lol.

Anything can happen in correspondence since many/most players are now using engines and many corr organizations even allow it .

I dont know how your FIDE rating affects your talent on ICCF chess, different ratings have different rating pools. 

Oh hell no, this thread is turning into an anti-correspondence chess KKK.

@Reb right but if the GM is also using an engine then I don't see how the 1800 is ever winning. Drawing maybe but winning I can't really imagine that.

Whereas OTB, especially in quick-ish events (like G30 or G45) I guess there's a tiny chance.

#3 on the ICCF list for US players is a GM with a 2570 rating.  His USCF?  1970.

I would like to quote FireBrandX.

"Quite the opposite is true. I'm an active player on ICCF, so I can speak from experience on what's going on in the crosstable, as well as how modern ICCF games are played:

As you climb the ICCF ranks, your opponents become stronger and stronger. Not because of hardware power, but because they have more experience on how to specialize in opening preparation. They got to where they were NOT by blindly letting their engines play, but by becoming experts in openings/middelgames that give the most chances for incredibly complex positions that allow for more human guidance of the engine. Now what happens in these world champion finals is everyone by that point is extremely well-versed in opening theory/research, so it becomes extremely difficult to catch them in a new creative line that offers a complex difficult position to analyze with an engine. As such, the vast majority of games reach a middlegame position that black (or even some rare cases white) can hold the draw with patient and deep analysis on each move.

As I've crossed 2500, I've come to realize that my opponents are so competent in the opening now that I can no longer play double-edged openings as black in order to try and win from that side. The opponents simply have too much experience and knowledge of how to avoid falling into a trap as white. Instead, I now have to use a new repertoire based on preventing white from gaining a complex position with any meaningful advantage. An example of this would be to adopt the Berlin defense. The main line of the Berlin exchanges queens, and in the ICCF arena, it becomes virtually impossible for white to create the kind of tension needed press a win from a micro-mistake black might happen to make. The engines are strong enough now that a simple quad core machince can hold the draw in the Berlin even against a $100,000,000 supercomputer. There just isn't enough complexity to trip the engine up. As such, your stronger ICCF players know this, and will avoid the Berlin even if it means playing something like the Italian game.

This is the real problem right now that we face on ICCF: Once your opponent becomes skilled enough in opening theory, your chances of finding a win become extremely remote. In fact, the crosstable shows the Leonardo winning 4 games in the event is actually an incredibly impressive accomplishment. I can tell you without a doubt he had to work VERY hard in the opening and come up with some creative lines in order to even reach a potentially winning position in each of those games. That's how ICCF is played now.

I myself only play on ICCF because I love being able to outsmart my opponent in the opening in spite of them having likely powerful hardware. My computer itself is just a standard desktop from 8 years ago, yet I was able to make USA CC Champion, Senior IM, and 2500+ rating from it, and that's all because of the hard work approach I take to analyzing the game and opening research. If I were to just let the engines play the game, I wouldn't have won anything with my old hardware. And that's why I get so annoyed when layman read articles about modern CC accomplishments and then ignorantly bag on it like they have any clue what it takes to win such events. It's a lot harder than you think, and even the draws that are predominant now typically had a lot of hard work put into them. I've had several games where I worked really hard and just BARELY missed the win, or my opponent came up with a brilliant game-saving line that computers would miss by themselves. But you would never know this, because all you see at a glance is 1/2 - 1/2."

@SilentKnighte5 Yes but super GMs don't play correspondence. For a reason.

If they did, and they put effort into it, they would never lose.

FirebrandX is USCF 1780 with a 2500 ICCF rating.

I agree. No one would ever lose, which is already the case with top level ICCF play.

Dud, try another way to trigger, it is now repetitive.

Really, you need to stop saying you are a troll.

They should not allow computers, but it would be really difficult to prevent players from breaking the rules, so that's probably why engines are allowed.

Yeah, I know I'm a genius, nobody else had thought about that before. I'm way ahead my time. But sooner or later, I will be understood and worshipped as I deserve.

not!

Thanks for chiming in, SilentKnighte5! Nice to have a comment from someone showing some evidence instead of just making some personal opinion. Very interesting!