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

Daily chess is based on correspondence (or postal) chess. That format has conditional moves and players that play that style of chess expect conditional moves. They help the games move on more quickly which is very important for games that can take months to play, even at 1 day per move.

If someone already knows what they're going to play, in response to their opponent moves, or some subset of moves, then it allows the game to continue, without additional input, until the game deviates. It save player effort and time.

In addition, in any daily game, it should be expected that you'll have at least the time control to think about moves, even without conditional moves, as your opponents can make their moves almost immediately after you make yours, which is not functionally different.

This is not helpful Martin. Not relevant to the conversation at all. We all know what conditional moves are and how they're helpful. Your explanation is just a waste of space. Please get with the conversation or be quiet

The question was "Why is it 'legal' in daily chess games to recreate your game on a different board or website and explore how different move pathways will turn out, whereas in live/regular chess it is not, and all that analysis has to be done in your head"?

Why are the rules different, instead of just having daily chess be the same rules as live/regular chess but with a longer time to mentally think about your game?

Again, it's because Daily Chess is Correspondence (postal) Chess, just online. Using an analysis board in correspondence (offline) has always been allowed so it's also allowed here. The only real difference is that some correspondence organizations allow engine and table base usage and here you can't use either.

That said, even if it wasn't technically allowed, it's unenforceable and not possible to catch someone doing it anyway.

There are some clubs where players agree to treat daily like live games. Joining one of those would be an option for those that want to play by those rules/restrictions.

that isn't an accident, they also have analysis.

So, to summarize your answer, it's different because two reasons:

1. It is that way because it's always been that way.

2. It is hard to enforce a rule of no recreating games on the side, so we allow it.

Why is it harder to enforce that in daily vs in rapid? It isn't. It looks like the rules are different for daily vs rapid because that's just the way they've always been, nobody has a good reason for it.