Correspondence Chess

If you want to play correspondence chess seriously the best thing to do is to find your nearest association. Mine is the SCCA since I'm from Scotland. The link to the association is at the bottom of the blog. Once you have signed up with your association you can play international games at the ICCF website. They are the correspondence equivalent of FIDE. If you don't want to play too seriously there are lots of websites offering free accounts to play chess. There is gameknot, chess.com, redhotpawn and scheming mind. I've played chess on all these websites and they have quite a few features in common. One feature that only chess.com has that is interesting is mentor. Its a program on the website you can use to learn strategy and various other chess lessons provided by high ranking players like Jeremy Silman. It does unfortunately require you to pay for their most expensive account in order to access it. Correspondence chess is very different from playing at a chess board with your opponent right in front of you. It can take months to finish a game so you aren't under as much time pressure. Players can still play too quickly and make mistakes however. Using the internet isn't the only way to play it there is of course the option of posting your moves to your opponent by letter or by email.