Is it ethical to spar against an engine when playing correspondence? I started playing correspondence on chess.com purely for the fun of it and to gain some deep learning (i.e. there's no prize involved).

We are about 10 moves in and coming close to me being out of book. To help my learning, I'd like to set the position up against a computer and spar against that. I am not interested in the computer's evaluation, recommended moves for me etc. I'm really just interested in practicing from a specific position.

My question is, is it ethical to spar against a computer between moves in a correspondence game?
Chess.com's site rules have the following to say:


  You can NEVER use chess programs (Chessmaster, Fritz, etc) to analyze current ongoing games unless specifically permitted (such as a computer tournament, etc). The only type of computer assistance allowed is games databases for opening lines in Turn-based Chess and Vote Chess. [...]


So it boils down to the question if playing out positions from a corr game against an engine counts as analyzing.

The answer can only be "yes" because for some possible continuations of your game, the engine provides its best moves. This is clearly an act of analysis.

There will be plenty of time to play against your engine after the game jas finished.