I analyze - Am I cheating?

Being old and daft, I have difficulty seeing ahead one move let alone 3 or 4. When I have time I use Analyze DURING the game. Immensely useful; sometimes I think I have a move to checkmate only to discover it s not so.

It is a crutch. I understand that, It is not availablein REAL games.

Am I also cheating my opponents even though they too can avail themselves of it?

no it's not cheating. It's foolish if you don't use it imo

I use it all the time when I want to see what is my best next move,but most time's you are guesslng what your opponant is going to do,so you really are not cheating,I find it most usefull in end game where you can see most likly where your opponant is going to move,it's not like using an engine,like some people do,that's cheating.

Its not cheating,otherwise why would they give the option of using it?

However, if you want to improve your visual skills, it is better not to use it and analyse as you would OTB.

Certainly not cheating BeemanDownUnder. If it was, the staff wouldn't allow it - there's a very clear anti-cheating policy on this site !

You're entitled to use all the tools here to the full & you should assume that your opponent is doing the same thing.

But may I suggest an even better method ?  I've just tried using the Analyze tool from one of my games (for the first time ever) & I found it rather limited.  I prefer to use the Game Editor for all my analysis of everything from games to chess puzzles - it enables you to explore continuations with any number of variations & you can also add your own notes/annotation to any move.

It's quite easy to use once you get the hang of it - just copy the FEN string (when you're looking at a game, it's the line of text in the small pane labelled 'FEN'), open the Game Editor (it's to be found in the drop-down menu under the More tab) & click on 'Paste FEN' & paste your FEN string into the pane that opens for you (follow the instructions to confirm). Then click on the Game Editor tab (next to 'Position Setup') & you should see the position of your game. From there you can add or delete moves & insert alternative lines of moves from any point.

{BTW-a FEN string is just a line of text that describes a given position on the board but without a list of moves or any player information etc.}

If you want to see the list of moves as well, then you need to download the PGN file & paste that in to the Game Editor instead.

You need to play around with it for a while to see what it can do !  Then if you want to, you can save the whole lot (by using the 'Copy PGN' function-it's only a few lines of text) in your own text file.  With a little practice I think you'll find it really useful.

But don't make the mistake I made of referring to it as the Analysis Board because I was once accused of cheating by using computer analysis during an ongoing game. Of course it doesn't do anything of the sort - all the analysis is done by yourself & I soon put that person right    

Wouldnt do it.wanna get better in real life

"during the game" is the key- This is probably cheating at the margins. STAFF CAN HANDLE THIS !!                      

Not cheating, as previously said.

I don't get how it would hinder your improvement.

 I simply want to play the best correspondence chess. you do that by using the analyzing board, it's not practice for live chess it's for real correspondence chess.

If I want to play live, I play live.

why provide it if it is cheating?

Sorry guys but those comments (#6 & #7) don't even make sense to me. Remember we are discussing Turn-Based/correspondence chess here ! It's not like Live or OTB chess - the whole point of it is that you should put a lot more thought and deeper analysis into your moves and not just make the first instictive move you can think of.

Another thing, this site has a strict no-cheating policy so do you think that they're going to provide members with tools to help them cheat ?

In the days before internet based chess, people playing correspondence games would have the position set up on a real board & experiment with alternative lines of moves to find the most promising one - I suppose you call that cheating ?

Obviously not cheating, but I'm only posting so I can find this thread again and try Stephen's nicely detailed instructions for using the game editor.  Thanks for the tip.

your not cheating thats for sure, but it is better to not analyze during the game and perhaps afterwards, i belive this will improve your chess.