Conditional moves

  

Conditional moves


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Garvin Gray    (2011-04-02)
Conditional moves

I know this topic comes up infrequently, but I am wondering what are the arguments against conditional moves. On a few occasions recently I wish I could have used a conditional move, so I was wondering what are the cons for conditional moves.

I can think of a few cons, as well as pros.


Paul Valle    (2011-04-02 21:59:27)
Conditional moves

I don´t know how difficult it is to implement conditional moves (I´m sure Thib has a short list of pending improvements with priorities). If it´s easy - I vote for including it. I can´t really see any major problems with offering it. On gameknot you can enter a long sequence of moves and I´ve had a game go the first 15 conditional moves before my opponent deviated. If something similar was implemented here, it would cut the average playing time for any tournament significantly.


Daniel Parmet    (2011-04-02 22:46:52)
Conditional moves

I have a game going right now in which I really wish I had conditional moves.


Thibault de Vassal    (2011-04-04 01:44:31)
Conditional moves

Hi guys, I understand your feeling, sorry about that... yes it would be a huge work to make conditional moves for chess or all games at FICGS, anyway I'm still not favourable to this for some reasons, eg. (from a previous discussion) "I think it's not completely fair and adds a (small) chancy factor to the game, so in this way I understand time abuse. (...) In many forced sequences, only one side may take advantage of conditional moves to save time, that's not fair (...) there are forced lines where only one player has no choice".


Don Groves    (2011-04-04 05:55:42)
Conditional moves

I agree Thib, particularly when a game is played in widely separated time zones. The conditional move could give one player several hours advantage on an opponent's clock while they sleep.


Daniel Parmet    (2011-04-04 07:33:36)
Conditional moves

if I may play devil's advocate... I believe it is precisely BECAUSE conditional moves are more fair that is why players want them. Now when a person is low on time or trying to extend the game into the next rating period they purposefully wait until the BEST hour in which to make a move to clip the most time off their opponent's clock. If conditional moves were in place, a person could sleep knowing that their forced response is already in the system for their sneaky opponent that just wants to flag them.


Don Groves    (2011-04-05 00:05:15)
Conditional moves

So it works both ways, then...


Scott Nichols    (2011-04-05 00:13:42)
Conditional moves

"if" moves used to be very good in the days of real "Postal Chess" where a move could take a month or two to receive. But these days where you can get a move and answer it in seconds if you want to, they (if moves) are not that big of deal. Certainly not worth the effort it would take to implement them. Also, there have been a few times where I wished I had not made that conditional move. Now I make it a practice to NEVER use them, even if available.


Don Groves    (2011-04-05 06:02:48)
Conditional moves

Good points, Scott.