Russell Sherwood Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Conditional moves are a tool treated with suspicion by many CC players, but used in the right manner they can be a useful resource.
ICCF allows simple linear conditionals in all International events. Simple linear conditionals are of the form:
If I play A and my opening plays B and then if I play C my opening plays D and so on. This is as opposed to the more complicated branched conditionals seen in postal play.
Should you use them?
Pros
Can reduce your workload
Can have a psychological effect on your opponent (Instamoves)
Can improve your available time on the clock
Can allow the game to flow, especially with "forced" moves
Cons
The line you enter is fixed, unless your opponent deviates from it
Can prevent the playing of certain temporal strategies by playing the game "too fast"
Can prevent you finding a better line
When these Pros and Cons are taken into account, the overall summary tends to be that their use should be situational:
1) If you have done your opening research and it seems both you and your opponent will be happy playing a certain opening line then using conditionals makes sense. e.g. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd 4.Nc3 and so on. A caveat I would add here is that if you have a novelly to play, then only use a conditional to go to the move before your conditional to give a final opportunity to check before playing.
2) If your opponent's move is "forced" then entering your response makes sense.
3) If you need to "gain" time on the clock, then using Conditional moves can help
The key thing to remember is that you need to take extra care in entering conditional moves, as a blunder can be locked in.
CorredpondenceChessTipoftheWeek
