Post by BLaffertyTaylor is spot on. Classic postal style correspondence chess is long
dead. Same with computer correspondence chess. Sad, but unavoidable.
I don't entirely agree. Certainly there is little point
playing correspondence chess [or these days e-mail chess] without
computer aid unless you can guarantee [how?] that your opponent is
playing ball, and there is even less point simply acting as postman
between your copy of Rybka, running overnight, and your opponent's
copy of Fritz [or whatever].
Nevertheless, these is a bar, somewhere in the region of
2000 Elo, above which a skilful player can add significantly to the
strength of a computer. That is, an hour spent analysing with the
help of the computer produces much better results than several
hours of the computer left to its own devices. A few years back,
there were "active chess" [ugh!] tournaments which were sometimes
won by quite weak players who proved more adept at driving their
computers than the GMs -- I haven't heard about such tournaments
recently, but I don't think computer chess has changed all that
much in the meantime.
In addition, there is still an intellectual satisfaction
in getting as near as possible to the "final truth" about some
position. If that position is your own current game, then so
much the better than simply descending on some random position
that turned out to be critical in a game between GMs.
Whether there are enough players with the requisite skills
and interests to make "correspondence" chess still viable is another
matter. Perhaps there aren't, in which case you are right and the
demise is inevitable. But it is also possible that there are still
enough players, and they [we!] just need some organisational help.
It's certainly a pity if players of Taylor's strength drop out on
the [unwarranted, IMHO] assumption that computer-aided slow chess
is of no interest or validity in its own right. Of course, if it
is viewed as "correspondence chess, but with cheating allowed",
then that taint alone will stop many people playing,
--
Andy Walker,
Nottingham.