Analysis Board

Is there anything unethical about using the Analysis Board?

If you don't ask your neighbour grandmaster for advice, no it's not.

No, you can use it to analyze your correspondence chess positions with no fear of ethical violation. It's there for a reason.

Just like you can use opening books or opening databases to generate all your opening moves. But once you get out of the "book" you have to do your own thinking (and analyzing) of course.

This is just the same as in the good old days before the internet when people played correspondence chess by snail mail. They could copy their moves right out of the latest edition of MCO and they could move the physical pieces around on their physical chessboard to analyze.

Originally posted by Aldan
Is there anything unethical about using the Analysis Board?

I have very limited visualisation abilities. The very reason I play on RHP is that the analyse board enables me to play a much better game than I could OTB. In fact, if all forms of chess prohibited this, I would have given up chess long ago.

It is important to recognise that RHP is a different form of chess, which I would argue is neither better or worse than OTB. It's just different. Of course, everyone has their preference.

But the rules allow its use, and the site provides the functionality, so it cannot be unethical.

Learn to love the board.....🙂

Initially I didn't use the analyze board feature at all, and even said I didn't on my profile page. It was kind of a macho thing. Then I realized that people didn't care whether I used it or not. I wasn't going to get an award or recognition for it or anything. And by not using it I was handicapping myself since other people use it. Now I use it and I find that it really helps me to get an awareness of the tactical and strategical requirments of a position. I will try out different plausible lines and see what happens.

Originally posted by Aldan
Is there anything unethical about using the Analysis Board?

Some people I think will setup the game on a real chess board. If one is unethical so is the other.