Conditional moves in daily games are essentially cheating, but easily fixable

you guys are a little lost in the weeds, so let me use an analogous hypothetical. There's a first person shooter game, FPS, and one of its rules is no aim-bots. If you use an aim-bot, it adjusts your controller output so that every shot is a headshot, but the moderators instantly ban you from the game. In the evening, after the moderators are done with work, they can't moderate that, so they make an official rule: aim-bots are allowed after 5pm. And this is how it's always been. I know, it's a silly hypothetical.

I come along and say "All these aim-bots after 5pm are annoying. It's dumb that it's illegal before 5pm and legal after 5pm."

And you guys get angry and keep saying things like:

"This is the way it always has been. Stop whining."

"It's for practice, to develop your strategy."

"If you don't want to use an aim-bot, you don't have to."

"Good luck trying to enforce that with no moderators."

"Most people that play at night LIKE using aim-bots, so shut up."

"If you want to play without aim-bots, just play in the morning. Duh."

Hopefully this hypothetical lets you see that these answers are true, but also a little stupid.

Your premise shows your lack of understanding.

Using research materials is not anything like using an aimbot. Using an aimbot is cheating. Using research materials in daily/correspondence chess is the whole point of it.

Have you ever actually tried to play daily chess correctly? Pick an opening you want to learn about, play your daily game, then spend actual time on it. Set it up on a physical board and analyze every move you are making in the game for *30 min minimum* (excluding obvious recaptures, moving out of check, etc.). For key points in the game, sit on your hands and spend a day or two or three deeply exploring 3-4 candidate lines. When you think you have *the* move, sleep on it and start over the next day from scratch and do it again. While you are waiting for their return move, keep analyzing lines and try to predict their own candidates move and see how accurate you can be. Watch Youtube videos on the opening. Look up master games following the same line. If your opponent *is also playing correctly*, you will learn (and more importantly retain for a long time, due to the effort put in) more about that opening from that one game than from years of trying to study some dry opening book or Chessable course.

I'm not sure how much you personally will benefit from this, though. You clearly don't play this way now given the outlook you have outlined, but have incredibly remarkable accuracy in your daily games anyway...so maybe that's why you are quick to dismiss the value of the variant. I guess that is the downside of being a wunderkind...playing at a 2200-2300 performance level but without following some master games or using an opening book, etc. is quite impressive but perhaps diminishes your ability to relate to the average chess player.

...or maybe you do take advantage of research in daily chess, and are being a bit hypocritical? Hard to say.

Your terrible analogy makes me think you may not even actually understand how the analysis tool works... First, in your analogous video game hypothetical you state right in the beginning that one of the rules is "no aim-bots." This is already a bad analogy, because in real life you are actually in opposition to the rules having allowed the advantageous tool right from the start, for hundreds of years. Secondly, there is nothing automatic about analysis, making an FPS "aim-bot" a horrible analogy for analysis in daily chess. There is no computer or engine or feedback of any kind suggesting moves to you or telling you whether you are thinking of good moves or not. Many times I've actually spent quite a while following certain threads of ideas, only for my opponent to respond in a totally unexpected way when I do finally play my brilliant move. Analysis does not by any means guarantee you'll make a good move. It basically just gives you a chance to think farther ahead than you would without it, by seeing how the moves might play out more than just a couple moves ahead. It's still up to you to correctly predict both your best future moves as well as your opponent's in order to make the best possible use of the analysis tool, but this is very tricky to do for the vast majority of people, and increasingly so with each additional action & reaction you try to predict.

Perhaps many gifted people who are naturally better at chess don't "need" an analysis tool to think several moves ahead & mentally switch back and forth between considering several different possible lines, but it would still improve their learning and speed up the improvement of their game if they did use analysis in daily chess.

Regardless, when you stumble on a game in which certain tools you don't like have been available to all players of this game since its inception, you have 3 choices: 1. just accept the rules you don't like, 2. find others who also dislike the same rules as you and will agree to play without using them, or 3. start a movement of some kind to remove the availability of this tool for all players. And if you're so smart, why are you choosing the option with the lowest chance of success, and making such a bad attempt at it that if you could rate persuasive ability yours would be the equivalent of a 236 elo in the game of persuasion... Your arguments are so bad that if you're really that good at chess, all I can think of is that you're so bored you're just trolling people for your own amusement. Either way, there are much better uses of your time than yelling at clouds, which is effectively what you're doing here.

You guys say "it's a bad hypothetical because"....

1: an aim bot is automatic and analysis board is not.

A: I understand that they are not the same thing. It's an analogy. They don't have to be the same in order to make a valid analogy. They just have to be similar in one way. The way that they are similar is that they both help you in your current game. None of you deny that using analysis board is helpful.

2: correspondence chess has always permitted the use of analysis board. (Technical and Harmony)

A: yeah that's why i said in my hypothetical that the FPS game has always allowed aim bots after 5 pm. always. since the very first release of the game. i know that was an important point for you, so i made sure to include that similarity. saying that my hypothetical is different because correspondence chess has ALWAYS included this tool is inaccurate. because my hypothetical FPS has also ALWAYS included its tool after 5pm.

3: Diogenes said it's different because using research materials is part of the game, whereas using an aimbot is always cheating. (one is different rules and the other is always cheating)

A: I was going to respond and say that no, some first person shooter games DO allow an aim bot built in. I was going to bring up one of the star wars games i played as a kid, where auto-aim was the default setting. but Technical beat me to it. He brought up an example of a game (goldeneye) where auto aim is an official feature. Again, my hypothetical holds on this point. Both analysis board and auto-aim are features in some games and game modes, and illegal in others. Both Diogenes and Harmony said my analogy was terrible, but you were both wrong.

"when in rome do as the romans"

"just accept the rules you don't like"

"most people that play at night LIKE using aim bots, so shut up"

arguments of conformity lol. that will never sway any man with healthy T.

"find others who also dislike the rules"

everyone ive ever played chess with in person agrees that analysis board is cheating. they just don't want to say that online because they don't want to get bullied like bongohito.

i believe you guys are in an echo chamber. if you actually polled regular chess players on chess.com, i believe over 80% of them would say that using analysis board to visualize moves in advance would feel like cheating, even in daily and even without stockfish. on this issue a speak for the common people. we all think aim bots are stupid. you don't have to agree. it's an opinion. but we want a format where we can play daily chess after 5pm with no aim bots allowed.

as bongohito said a long time ago

"if chess.com wants to have a weird separate category of chess where people can use analysis board, that's fine"

"Correspondence chess (known as Daily Chess on Chess.com) is just like any other game of chess with one exception: it is played remotely and does not require both players to play at the same time. Each player has considerably longer to make a move, reducing the potential for blunders in correspondence games and leading to higher quality games." ~Terms.

thank you for providing this statement from the official definition. note that it says it is JUST like any other game of chess but for one exception: it does not require both players to play at the same time.

this is saying that apart from this one exception (the timing / both online aspect), the rules are the same.

and yet, the rules are not the same, as implemented by chess .com.

if they wanted to accurately describe daily chess, they would have said "it is just like any other game of chess but with two exceptions. it is does not require both players to play at the same time, each player has considerably longer to make a move. And, you are allowed to use analysis board to visualize sequences."

but they didnt say that. that definition you provided doesn't accurately reflect what daily chess is right now. the definition is good. most people would like it if daily chess matched that definition.

it's not cheating because both sides get it so it's fair game

Still not getting the point that it is impossible to "have longer games" that go into months and years and not to allow research...your chess learning and interaction will not stop because you are playing a daily game.

You are ultimately advocating for what any chessplayer would want in the selfish ideal...for you to have as long as you want to make your move without suffering a penalty, but for your opponent to hurry up when it is their move so you don't get bored. Such a time control is impossible, of course. But if you want to push for a brand new classical time control of 1 move/day, go for it, just stop trying to ruin the working-for-decades variant that other people are playing.

If you were to advocate for Chess960 to drop to Chess120 because you personally only liked a subset of the opening layouts, it would be the same thing. You would be trying to ruin a variant because you don't want to create something new, just ruin something established to fit your sensibilities. You fail to see this, because in your mind, Daily Chess is inherently "wrong" and so must be fixed. You are also calling on an imaginary silent majority to make your case. Note the irony...if 80% of players actually wanted things your way, there would already be such a variant.

You might as well try "80% of players would want forced rematches, nobody likes quitters". These periodic complaints are the same in basic character. They push a personal pet peeve and try to break something that works, rather than add something new.

Imprecise. Aimbots are run externally, and so can never be the same as built-in aim assists that are chooseable by all players. Aim assist and aimbots are fundamentally different animals. Even if it was "allowed after 5pm" it would very shortly become a form of pay to play (because the best bots would start charging $$$), or at the very least they would be creating a game where your PC literacy outside the game determines how successful you are. If you want to make this argument, refine your terminology. Your analogy *was* both tortured and terrible, and you contorted it that way in order to to preserve the inherent negativity associated with aimbots (allowed or not) and apply that negativity to the use of an analysis board, because *you* see them both as negative. Doesn't fly.

Ok I'll try again, though I must admit at this point that you seem impressively resistant to logic.

The exact moment your argument flew off the rails into a deep abyss is when you said "...any man with healthy T..." Ok so now your incel-to-alt-right maga-manosphere-misogynist brainwashing is somehow leaking into your chess-related discussion... which only makes it that much clearer to us all why you seem to have a tentative connection to reality at best. You claim to speak for 80% of people... well where are they? Why aren't they outnumbering us in this thread, seeking places to vent their frustration about this horrific oppression just like you are? Oh, it's because they're scared of being bullied? They're mild-mannered, non-confrontational little scaredy-cat beta boys? Interesting you should say that. But I wonder whatever happened to "any man with healthy T..."? Your silent comrades' testosterone levels are all supposed to be too high to allow them to be pressured into silently conforming, remember? "They don't want to get bullied" ha, come on. Maybe they just don't want to have to try to win an argument using words and logic instead of their preferred tactic of "might makes right" and/or oily car salesman "charisma." You are a bully, and you are crying that we're the bullies, which is ironically a typical thing bullies do when confronted. We are merely responding to your arguments with counter-arguments. Nurse your bruised ego as much as you need to, but none of this is actually about you personally. We are simply dealing in cold hard facts here, and unfortunately facts don't care about your feelings here. So you can stop crying bully, and either find a better argument or just quit wasting both your time and ours right now because I can tell you for sure that there isn't one. You've gone off the deep end my friend, and you are splashing around so much because you don't know how to swim. That's why we are all here to help you, let us help you!

I know it doesn't matter what I say to you anymore, and I realize now that it couldn't possibly change your mind at all. You will only dig in deeper and push back harder the more your beliefs are disproved. I'm only still replying as if you were a rational being in the hope that maybe, somewhere deep down, a hint of a spark of a notion may subconsciously register that "Hmm, we may not agree, but I see that they do have reasons for their views that seem valid enough to them, and I can understand why someone might think that way... I suppose I should just accept that and live & let live." I'm not holding my breath though. So I'll just to continue going through the motions here, just to say I gave you a fair shot at understanding. No worries if you can't make the jump, our hopes are not high.

Your analogy is still very bad, nothing you said redeemed it in the least. The whole reason you chose aimbots in your analogy is because it's something that is easy to call cheating. But aimbots are nothing like the analysis tool, as you've already admitted. Therefore, aimbots are not a good analogy to the analysis tool. Aimbots and analysis both help you? Aimbots ensure a good shot, analysis does not come anywhere near ensuring a good move. You took the thinnest possible thread of connection and stretched it far beyond what reason will allow. For an aimbot to be more analogous to analysis, it could not ensure a good shot, in which case it would effectively not be an aimbot. Therefore, there is no way to make an aimbot be a good analogy for chess analysis.

One more reason it's still a bad analogy, which you didn't seem to be able to understand last time I tried to explain, is that in your hypothetical video game, as you said, there is a certain time of day after which aimbots are allowed, and it has been that way from the start. That is not analogous to Daily Chess because Daily is not (and never has been) simply regular chess but with extra-long time settings. That is a misunderstanding you haven't seemed to come to terms with yet. Daily Chess, and correspondence chess before it, have always been their own separate game from classical/rapid/etc chess, with this distinctly different rule regarding analysis being allowed. There was never a time when analysis wasn't allowed in this kind of chess. That is why it is incorrect to make the analogy that in this video game, aimbots were EVER disallowed in any way. To make your analogy less imperfect, you would have to say that aimbots were never disallowed to any degree. But you can't say that, because then the whole analogy just falls apart again and becomes even more pointless. Which is one more reason why everyone is saying it's a bad analogy.

To improve upon your bad analogy a little (which is still going to be imperfect, so I can only hope that doesn't throw you off too much) let's say ok, here is your hypothetical FPS video game where no aimbots are allowed after 5pm. But THEN, another similar video game comes out, in fact it's a sequel to the first one and it is very similar to it, EXCEPT that aimbots are always allowed, all around the clock all the time. This newer and similar-but-different game is designed specifically to allow this kind of assistance to be available to all players at all times, though it is up to each player if they choose to use it or not. Some might enjoy the greater challenge of playing without aimbots, even against those who they know will probably be using them. Imagine how satisfied and accomplished you would feel if you were beating most people who use aimbots, without even using one yourself! There would be some great satisfaction in that, right? And it would also have to soften the blow of losing too when you do lose. Yeah maybe you lost, but you were playing on hard mode while your opponent was playing on easy mode. You almost definitely would have won if the playing field were level, and that is one of the best consolations anyone could hope for after a loss.

But if you still just couldn't accept that this newer game lets everyone use aimbots all the time, then I suppose you could try convincing the developers to create an alternate version of the new game that's almost exactly the same, except without the aimbots. Or you could create such a game yourself. Or you could just join or create a community of like-minded players who don't use aimbots, and then you could all play only with eachother. And if you're really speaking for 80% of the players, your special new community should quickly balloon into the newly dominant way to play this game, and then all your dreams will be reality.

Do you see how this is a better analogy? Yet in both this analogy and in the real-life scenario it represents, what you can't reasonably expect to do is to claim to speak for everyone, and expect us to agree with you or capitulate to you simply because you claim most people agree with you, and not us. Because despite your bold assumption that you represent 80% of players, you obviously don't. It's so simply clearly obvious. Which is why they aren't showing up to support you, which is why you can't prove you represent a silent majority, which is why you're resorting to making even more ridiculous claims and assertions that you can't possibly back up to overwhelm us with a barrage of nonsense, in the hopes that some of it will slip by and by default achieve a status of "uncontested fact." If 80% of players really wanted this, nobody would be able to stop it from existing. Chess websites like this one and lichess would be falling over themselves to give users this new superior version of chess everyone prefers, and it would already be the dominant way chess was played right now. OVER 80%??? Come on now. Get real, friend, please. I really have to wonder what your theory is for why this isn't already happening? Maybe the only reason is simply because nobody has truly championed this idea yet, and you are denying your calling to be that guy when it's clearly meant to be you taking up this banner and leading the masses to victory over the oppressive minority. Or maybe your T is just too healthy to allow you to do anything but whine and complain on a random chess forum.

However, the slightly-improved analogy is still bad because as I explained before, aimbots are nowhere near to being sufficiently analogous to the analysis tool. A somewhat better analogy would be that you can pause the video game and enter something like a "daydream mode" in which you can try playing out the game in as many ways as you want without affecting the actual gameplay, and then unpause and return to the real game to try out the strategies and techniques you've honed in daydream mode. This is still not a great analogy because in daydream mode, such a video game would presumably behave and react exactly as it would during real gameplay, whereas in analysis mode it's entirely up to you to make your best guess as to how your opponent will respond to your moves. But the analogy still works inasmuch as some players would invariably choose to use daydream mode in hopes of improving their gameplay more quickly, while others would prefer to play the game on their own and figure everything out themselves on the fly. That is the best video game analogy I can think of off the top of my head, and it's far from perfect, but it's also far less far from perfect than your analogy was.

imagine classical chess OTB where players have a digital tablet provided by the tournament organizer with analysis board but without engine: games would be done in 1 hour instead of 5 hours at the same level of play !

Because visualizations take a lot of effort and time.

we are not equal in visualization capability, most of us can't see 8 moves ahead while some players can do blind chess of 1 game, some others even multiple simultaneous blind games !

The analysis board in daily chess allow us to do wide and deep analysis with minimal amount of time spent.
so you could argue that the analysis board should be allowed in classical OTB games too !