Forms of communication?

[MJMcCready]

I certainly never sent the same envelope back and forth. Send your most decrepit envelopes to the opponent who always returns a new one. Seemed eminently sensible at the time.

That's gamesmanship. Putting your opponent on tilt, inducing mumbled profanities, causing him to commit errors.

Niec tactit.

[MJMcCready]

Gamesmanship most have been prevalent in correspondence chess, I wonder what tricks people got up to. I suppose if you received the envelope and find the scoresheet suddenly bloodstained, that would lessen your interest in playing on, making you easier to beat.

[Geoff Chandler]

I expect Tim Harding my have few gamesmanship tales, he wrote two books on correspondence chess the one titled:
'Startling Correspondence Miniatures' contains a section on mistakes on notation but not sure how you could trick someone into this.

Maybe in a position where Black has moved his King and is back on e8, you send in a tempting conditional line that looks like an error on your
part, this involves Black castling. Black accepts and plays out the conditional line and you write back saying castling is illegal and claim the game.

(surely that has happened in postal play, a player in error castling after moving their King, there are famous OTB cases of this happening.)

[MJMcCready]

If you received an envelope during the game but notice it's got wires coming out of it and there's a ticking sound too, would you assume your opponent's move is dynamic or perhaps explosive? Given the choice between early resignation and being blown up in your living room, I know which option I'd take.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Black accepts and plays out the conditional line and you write back saying castling is illegal and claim the game.

(surely that has happened in postal play, a player in error castling after moving their King, there are famous OTB cases of this happening.)"

It probably has, but from memory the penalty is just added time. Now virtually all CC is online, you can't do that anyway, or accidentally write Rf6 when you meant Rf5. I did hear one proper postal game terminated when a player received an envelope which smelt bad, and it contained the score sheet and (presumably four-legged) animal waste.

The other good thing about playing online is that your opponent can't claim not to have received the move, or lie about when he got it. People lying about dates of receipt was a major issue in old-style CC. It was better using cards, as you then had evidence of the moves played. I did have one guy changing a previous move on the shuttling score sheet. Luckily, I always photocopied it every time I got it, as he had already been annoying in a different way. I complained to my captain, who complained to the opposing captain, who rang me to apologise, resign the game and say there were always problems with that person, and he wouldn't pick him again! Then a couple of weeks later, I got a repeated move, so I guess the other captain hadn't built up sufficient resolve to talk to his player.

The reason 1.5254 5755 came in was to avoid language difficulties. If you played 21.P-KKt4 and your opponent wrote something Cyrillic, you might both get confused.

[MJMcCready]

I do hope you're not suggesting that playing on line is meretricious. Provided we obviate the obviousness of it being a definite improvement, that's preposterous.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"I do hope you're not suggesting that playing on line is meretricious. Provided we obviate the obviousness of it being a definite improvement, that's preposterous."

No, I would never say anything like that.

[Joey Stewart]

It seems like cheating never changes, the methods merely get more sophisticated. Those same players in the 80s altering score sheets and putting excrement in their used envelopes are probably now laughing it up at how easy it is to run engines and win every game online....