Originally posted by vistesd
The immediacy of making a decision is part of the mental game. In an OTB game, if someone under stress moves the wrong piece in contradiction to what their plan was, that is part of the game. The if-then feature seems to me to be a kind of ...[text shortened]... the best players blunder occasionally. It's part of the game.
Hang on. Either I don't get the if/then or else a lot of people on here don't.
The way I read it is this.
You program in certain responses to your opponents moves. Assuming this is for the first move, it might look something like...
if 1. e4
then 1. ..e5
else
if 1. d4
then 1. ..Nf3
else if somethingCompletelyDifferent
then doNothing
(better using a case statement here, but this is clearer to non programmers.)
So you program all this in, and then go on holidays for a week. Your opponent chooses a move, 1. d4, so now its your turn. RHP sees that you have a if/then set up for this game, so it automagically makes your move for you..Nf3 (might be a nice idea to be able to use your total t/o before making this move if you are going on a longer vacation.) your opponent never sees that this move has been programmed in by you. To him, it just looks like you've just made a move. He never/ever sees the if/then's that u have programmed in.
This is correspondence chess. You can take ages on each move. Whether that ages is before your opponents move (I often do this when starting off an attacking sequence) or after doesn't really matter. This isn't otb, so there is no real time related stress. The immediacy involved in deciding a move and actually pressing the 'move' button is the exact same as the immediacy involved in deciding a move and programming the if/thens. I honestly don't see where blunder relief comes into it. If you're going to blunder clicking on 'move', then you're going to blunder clicking on 'Save if/then'.
The only (important) times I can see this being of use are...
1) when going on vacation, you could program in some moves if you kow for a fact that u won't be able to move (don't forget, we don't all go to some nice resort for holliers). Maybe you'll have guessed what your opp is going to do and you have lengthened the odds of being t/o'd, which are pretty short if u just use a vacation flag.
2) You've just captured a piece and you know for a fact ( 99% ) that your opp is going to recapture, then u can quickly program a if/then to play your next move.
3) For opening games. Most openings are very similar and can be played by some type of if/then. Honestly, in book, how many openings are very interesting until u actually get out of book? You would need to be able to save/export your if/then for this to be very useful.
I think its a good idea, especially considering the fact that the vacation flag doesn't prevent people timing you out.
D