Conditional moves (preview)

Hi all my first post on the forum so a quick introduction.  My name is David, I am 26 and from the UK.  I really love chess and have being playing since I was 8.  I am a new member of the website joining earlier today. 

The conditional moves feature of the website is very good but I wish it could be viewable before your own moves.  Thanks for reading this post, I hope the suggestion is took onboard. 

Do you mean that you would like to see the "Conditional Moves of your oppenent" before making your move ?  ( no one would do it if you could see their conditional moves )

OR do you mean....

You would like to know there are conditional moves waiting before you make your move ?  ( but you don't know what they are )

I like the surprise of a conditional move and I use it to make a game go along faster.  Knowing my oppenent has a conditional move waiting would throw me off.  I would probably be too careful .  I would think he is reading my mind or something (LOL).

Anyways, welcome to the site !  Enjoy your games and the best part is get involved in a tournament as soon as possible.  I just joined my first (last week)and it is great fun and challenging to play 10 games at once ( or more !)

Are conditional moves automatically done by the computer if an opponent does the conditional move?  

I didn't mean any of them two guesses. 

What I mean is that you can get the conditional moves board on to plan your moves when its your move.  (Hope I explained that well enough.) 

i think you are mixing up conditional moves and the analysis board.

conditional moves are moves that you make ahead of time (i.e. before your opponent has a chance to move yet). you can set it up so that if your opponent makes the move you thought he would, then the computer will make the move you pre-selected.

if you are asking if it is possible to use the analysis board before it is your move, just select the analysis link under the moves tab.

Since you are a basic user, you get to predict one line of moves. This means that as long as your opponent moves what you think they'll move, the computer will make the moves automatically. I checkmated someone with conditional moves once. Is that what you meant?

Thanks trigs.  I meant the analysis board in the end.  What I was after was a way to view the game board after a few moves starting with my own move.  Which the analysis board provides. 

Hi everybody I'm Iain and I've been on this site long enough to say that Conditional Moves are a bad idea.

Once they were created people have been using them against me and I wish that there was a way that using this feature could be limited to so many moves per class.

For example basic members could get only three CM's per 10 games, all the way up to Diamond who could have fifty CM's per 10 games.

I would like feedback on this idea because it is unfair that everyone is using unlimited conditional moves at the moment and in my view isn't fair on the people who have been here as long as I have.

In Postal play back in the day, you would see the conditional moves before you moved.  They were call "if" moves and were listed on the post card.  If you move Rb4, then I move Bc6.  Usually in the form of:

if 32. Rb4, then 32...Bc6

Helped speed up games hampered by snail mail and transmission delays.  Great for the opening so you could reach the meat of the game, or going throught a forced sequence.  Also saved a lot of money, airmail to other countries adds up.  Of course if you made a mistake in the if moves you could lose a piece or a game.

I like them for the same basic reason, speed up the opening play.  Most CC players use opening manuals, databases and home analysis.  If you know you're doing a Ruy, or Najdorf, or QGD why not zip through the first 10+ moves that everyone knows you're going to make anyway?

In the second part, forced continuations its an aid to calculation.  I remember spending a week on one card coming up with a forced win.  My opponent resigned before I could send it.  Still, it was a worthwhile task.

Here there is the surprise factor which bothers many.  For the opening I don't think that should be a real problem.  If it is you need to learn your opening better.  Later in the game, it doesn't bother me but I can see some being uncomfortable.  Still that raises the question, what are you doing after you move?  Do you just ignore the game until the next move comes in?    If so you are going to be at a disadvantage anyway because if your opponent is taking the time to analyze and come up with conditional strings he's putting in more time and effort than you.  Its a good way to lose.

As long as "if" move exist I'll use them on occasion.  Others may or may not as the mood strikes them and those that don't like them are free to lobby for a change. 

As to the thought that it is unfair that those who pay money and keep the site running get more than those who do not, regardless of the length of time on the site: You get what you pay for and if you pay for nothing...

Ok then so I'm going on vacation later this month.

So by your standards I will walk back into about 100 conditional moves (10 per opponent). Unless I can win all of them before then.

Why can't chess.com limit conditional moves like vacation time?

At lower levels I don't think conditional moves come into play that much at all. I know I rarely use them and mainly do it when there is high likelyhood I know what the reply is going to be to my move or if the continuation is forced. Save me and my opponent time.

However, it shouldn't matter how many conditional moves there are. It doesn't really decrease the amount of time you have to think about the game. You can never guarantee more than the moves/day for any game since some players will get on shortly after you make a move anyway and make theirs.

If someone is good enough to analyze a game well enough to do a lot of conditional moves then that a good thing for them. Doesn't impact my play at all.

I don't understand this at all.  You can run into conditional moves with or with out vacation.  Not all games are conducive to conditional moves, and those that are rarely to 10 moves.  In the opening if you hit a ten move string it was an opening you were playing, if not you deviated early from the conditional line, so what is the problem?

I have never used this function, although one of my current opponents has already used it 3 times in our game. I see no problem with this at all; you still have the same 3 days (or whatever) to make your next move. In this game, some of my following moves were pretty obvious anyway. I think conditional moves are an excellent idea if you are engaged in other activities and don't want to take any risk with time pressure.

I never use conditional moves and someone plays 5 of them when I walk in the door to me that isn't right to me that player should explain why they did it in the first place.

Well I'm still against the idea of conditional moves just because I like to play psycologically and since conditional moves came on to chess.com I always hated them for taking the psycology factor right out of the game.

I knew you were going to say that!

Come on don't you see that chess.com has spoiled my reputation on here with conditional moves? I used to be at 1100 ish then some punk comes along throws some conditional moves in my face and now I'm <1100 in my rating which came from a 30+ loosing run.

Personally I blame a lot of conditional moves for my downfall.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with conditional moves . If I make a move and my opponent has only 1 or 2 reasonable responses why should I wait for that response if I already know my next move ?  What if I put him in check and he has only one legal move ?  They are great when you have a forced mate and are playing one of those guys who dont believe in resigning and have served me well in this instance for sure ! 

I don't mind if the opponent has a conditional move for checkmate I can forgive those players.

I don't like the players who string together 4 or 5 conditional moves together then I think why bother playing this person?

I think that soon I should start a couple of groups one for and one against conditional moves and see which gets the most members.

I'm pro-conditional.