IV plays on calendars work well if you enter the spread with a big IV skew. If the IV collapses the front month price drops far more than the back month.
check my site @ http://www.angelfire.com/de3/options/OptionCorner.html you will find answers on most of your questions. since there is a lack of interest to it, i did not update it anymore. and read my post in delta-neutral . things much more complicated,than you may think. i would be very interested to hear, how can i trade IV, by using software that i create (which generate those pages for website) i can do this search every 15 min during trading session, but still don't have any good strategy))))))). what else can be included in this kind of search? good luck!
"IV plays on calendars work well if you enter the spread with a big IV skew. If the IV collapses the front month price drops far more than the back month." These are fairly common with IV up across the board. It is also the way you play an earnings release without exposing yourself to large risk.
I agree that there are lots of potential calendars at present because IV is high and this in turn produces lots of skews. When you mentioned this as an earnings play, how do you see this working. To me it would seem that you don't want the stock to move but just the volatility to drop which it usually does after earnings if there's no suprise. Is this what you meant by an earnings play?