Conditional move etiquette

Again with the cheap psychological card? Isnt it enough that we are not magnanimous as you sages are, you have to bring it up in every other response too?

These are very interesting arguments for why you prefer not to have your opponent move rapidly. I think I can understand and appreciate them, and they are possibly the most lucid ones I've seen so far in this thread :-) I don't see how you can improve your situation and gain more analysis time, though, if your opponent simply choses to respond rapidly by hand.

You mention seeing a position days in advance -- out of curiosity, how much time do you actually spend on planning and moving in your games? I have a tendency to play fairly quickly (couple of minutes) once I see the new position, although I realize I should probably extend this. Does a player like youself (400 pts higher than me) actually spend an hour scheming and plotting at many places in a game?  What's the most or typical time you sink into a good, evenly matched, game?

It doesn't matter how fast my opponent moves, I can control how fast I move.  How much time I actually spend depends on the position.  After my opponent moves the first thing I ask myself is why did he make that move.  What does it threaten.  I spend some time looking at diagonals, files, and ranks to see if there are any tactical threats.  I usually look at all the places that the piece he just moved can go to in two moves.  I look at the different thematic pawn breaks that my opponent can play and see if they work.  I start looking for ways to restrain my opponent's pawn breaks.   Next I look at the pawn breaks, I want to make.  I  try them and see if they can be played now or if they need further preparation.  I look to see if there are any tactical threats I can make.  I usually know what I want to do stratigically, so I start to look for moves that advance my stratigic aims.    I then select a few candidate moves.  When I start analysing the candidate moves, the first question I ask is "is it safe?"  I usually flip the board and look at it from the opponent's view and try to figure how I would respond to the move.  I then dig in and try a typical line.  Once I find a move I like, I look to see if there is a better move availaible.  Finally, after I have selected my move I take a final look to see if it is a blunder.    How fast I do this depends upon how fresh I am.  The first game I look at in the morning, I usually spend about 45 minutes on.  As the day goes on it takes me longer to make a move (I am 65 years old and I don't have the mental endurance I had when I was younger).   I probably make moves in about 3 games a day.  Besides these games, there are games where I am still in the opening stages and I will make a moves in a few of these.

expedited-conditionals: twice the fun but only half the calories.

LOL!

http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=46252829

nice mate, last 3 moves in "automatic", must hurt, i know, but, from this side, is always funny :D

Dear all

sorry, I seem to have a set off an avalanche of indignation to this problem and I have this bad feeling that there has been some kind of terrible misunderstanding - for which I apologize. Neither me nor my opponent set up any kind of conditional moves in advance, but a conditional move was 'triggered' in our game that neither of us wanted. I have no idea why this happened because, as said, neither of us set it up and I asked my opponent explicity about this and he said he knew nothing about it. So it has nothing to do with etiquette, but with being forced to make a move - this is why I was so annoyed, but judging from the comments here, it is not what conditional moves usually are. Anyone have any idea how or why this happened? BTW, I have chosen to ignore all the insults, bullying and rude comments made about my original post on this thread, but I would have expected a more intelligent and civilized level of discussion from fellow chess players, but it seems there are nasty people in all walks of life.

I sometimes use conditional moves and find nothing offensive about them.

If a move appears in the game that neither player played, then that sounds like a bug.  That is not a Conditional Move in the usually-accepted context: which is, simply, one player setting up one or more moves to play "If my opponent plays *this*, I'm going to play *this* in reply...".

I recommend reporting the issue via http://support.chess.com/

[Before you do, bear in mind the possibility that either you or your opponent may have entered conditional moves by mistake: I once started analysing a position only to realise I was using the Conditional Moves window rather than the Analysis Board!  I deleted the conditional move lines really quick ;-) ... oops!]