How good are CC players

Where is Paul Bunyan to chop this thread tree at it's roots? This thread needs Lithium, Zoloft, Prozac or 40 sleeping pills. There is no correlation, compliment, relationship, reciprocity, whatever synonym you wish to use between OTB chess and correspondence chess. It simply doesn't exist. Case closed. Move along people there is nothing to see here, sheesh ;-(

 Researching doesn't apply to everyone, including me.  The simple fact about CC is that we are able to evaluate each move uncontested with a clock staring at our faces.  I played live chess-long months ago.  The best I achieved was a little over 1400.  I am over 1800 now CC.  Some people are able to play with a clock, and others do better evaluating without a time constraint.

CC rating- 100-300 above live chess long rating.

You realize on this site anyway, everyones cc rating is 2-5 hundred points higher right?

Masters can give guys like us 1:5 time odds because their initial evaluations are beyond what we can understand with much more time.  The top 10's understanding is in the same way greater, even OTB with a clock in their face, than any 1800 (or run-of-the-mill GM for that matter) who takes two weeks.

A master in blindfold play will know more about a position in 30 seconds than you will after 30 minutes of clock free analyzing, so lets be realistic here...

I'd put my money  on the OTB player...for both competitions.  OTB and CC. 

I played a money game against James Plaskett one time, just before he became British champion - I had just won a Congress in Wales - he played blindfold - he creamed me - it was quite comfortably ( or perhaps I should say UNcomfortably ) the most comprehensive defeat I have ever suffered

  Ulf Anderson is a GM in both otb and cc.  He reached #4 in the world in otb play (while Kasparov and Karpov were still active).  He reached #1 on the cc rating list in 2002 but didn't win the world cc championship.  I think this shows that although the best otb players are stronger than the best cc players the difference is not large.

  Second, the first world correspondence champion Cecil Purdy, who was also a country champion in otb play said when he first took up cc he was shocked how much stronger his opponent who was an A player otb was.  Granted this was long before computers. (see the next paragraph)

  Third, the best computers are only stronger than most humans in short time controls not in correspondence time controls.  I remember reading an interview once with one of the correspondence world champions and he said he hoped his opponent relied on a computer because, in his own words, "after spending 20 hours looking at a position it was very unlikely that he'd hang a piece".