My players have voted on playing Curse of Strahd and I will buy the module soon and begin prepping for our campaign that we will be playing virtually. I have run mostly homebrew but have done two official adventures before, Princes of the Apocalypse and Dungeon of the Mad Mage. So just wanted to reach out to the community here for some answers to some questions. I have read a lot of previous threads on this campaign, but still have these questions..

1. PotA I felt provided a lot of help and descriptions of places and people and things, which all helped guiding the players which made it easier to DM. The sections that were marked clearly what I could read out loud to players for every room of the dungeons were awesome. While DotMM basically had little to none of that. Where does Curse of Strahd fall in this range?
2. Are there any free resources that might make it easier to run curse of strahd virtually. I have heard about some deck that can be used but anything else outside of that? Like pre made battle maps and such?
3. How are most people playing D&D virtually these days? This will be my first virtual game and have heard about many options. But I want to hear from the people who are actually using them instead of just reading about them.
4. How important is the Guide to Ravenloft to the campaign? My players prefer to mostly stay on track through through the narrative (to the point where they sometimes actually ask to be railroaded to the next plot point). Will the Guide to Ravenloft then essentially be meaningless if they don't intend on exploring the world outside of the main narrative?
5. Any general advice for the campaign?

I really appreciate any and all help you guys will be able to provide.

1.  About the same if slightly more read aloud text as POTA
2. You can copy and paste the maps from the book into any online resource you like. 
3. I used roll 20 but I bought COS on there for the maps and stuff because I played it about a year 
4. The module is not designed with Van richten's guide in mind, it does include things you could add but that would technically you would have to come up with how yourself 
5. There is allot:

• Mt Baratok and Tsolenka pass are not well fleshed out if you draw it on the cards look up ways to add to it 
• Strahd is a regen monster that means you should aim for about 3 rounds of regeneration with him, whether that's keeping him at range or doing hit and run
• This youtube channel  and this reddit have a bunch of suggestions on how to add to the module and there are allot more 
• The quest is an artifact grab to defeat strahd for the artifacts to remain important you will have to limit what you give that players. For example don't give components for spells like dawn or magic items that prevent regeneration
• The book of strahd is kind of lack luster mechanically, it exists for lore. If you have a party where everyone is hoping to get an item you might want to add something to it. For example making it one of the spell book items or a casting focus, alternatively you might make it trade-able to some one. 
• The module has allot of things that go on try not to distract your players too much. Let them finish what they are doing before you introduce something else or they might end up stun locked trying to 100% each area 1 by 1. 

Thank you so much for this. You provided pretty much everything I could have hoped for!