What is the proper way to notate conditional moves in correspondence chess, especially on a USCF correspondence card? What are other players’ experiences with and opinions about conditional moves? Are there any drawbacks to including a conditional move on a card?
With thanks…
There is the story about the player who responded to 1.d4 with 1…g6 if 2. ANY then …Bg7. He quickly resigned after White played 2.Bh6.
Alex Relyea
Exactly. Sending conditional moves is a good way to speed up the process when the next move is pretty obvious, but the moral of Mr. Relyea’s story is that you had better be very sure you have looked at ALL possible replies before sending your conditional move.
By the way, to answer Mr. Lartigue’s question, it is fine to send them the way I described above. For example:
1.e4
if 1…e6 then 2.d4
is just fine. If one is playing the Walter Muir e-quads, it is a little different. I rarely have found it useful to send conditional moves.
Alex Relyea
Does one have to acknowledge conditional moves? I generally hate them and have always just sent my move ignoring the conditional, to the annoyance of my opponent.
If you ignore his conditional, but then play the same move anyway, I can see why he would be annoyed. But if you play a different move, he has nothing to be annoyed about.
Bill Smythe
Right. Annoyance is good. It tends to cloud the vision.
Yes, I’ve noticed that with some of your forum posts, as well. 
Bill Smythe
I like the conditionals on the ICCF server. The opponent can’t see your conditional in advance and doesn’t know about it until he makes his move.
If conditional moves are going to be allowed, I agree that this is the best way to do it.
Works fine on servers. Not so effective with postcards.
Perhaps there’s the possibility of a Monty Python sketch here. A special delivery postcard, and each time the recipient replies, the postman adds a move to the card…
Ok, this is absolute genius. This sketch must be made.
Considering two Pro Chess League games were decided by unfortunate pre-moves, that ought to be folded into the sketch.
Considering two Pro Chess League games were decided by unfortunate pre-moves, that ought to be folded into the sketch.
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sorry, but what are “pre-moves”? i thought chess league games were “live” via internet?
…scot…
I am guessing he is referring to a blitz tactic of clicking a response during the opponent’s obvious move so that it is played immediately with minimum time going off the clock. If it turns out the opponent’s move was not obvious then the clicked response may be a brutal blunder (such as in the Armenia-Delhi came on Wednesday where it dropped a queen). I’d think that the time needed to properly set up a conditional response would negate the time savings that normally comes from a pre-move.
Right. I don’t play online blitz so I don’t know how it works exactly. In one case the player committed to one move and was stuck when the opponent interpolated QxQ. In the other the incorrect assumption n what the opponent would do resulted in stalemate.