Conditional move

A conditional move expresses an instruction such as: if the opponent plays this exact move, respond with that move. The platform stores the condition and automatically submits the reply only when the opponent's move matches it exactly.

The feature is mainly associated with correspondence-style or daily games, where players may have many hours or days for each turn. It lets a player prepare forced replies without reopening the game after every predictable move. Some interfaces also allow several branches, each attached to a different opponent reply.

If the opponent chooses something that was not predicted, the condition does nothing and the player decides normally. This differs from a live-chess premove, which queues a move for the next turn and executes only if the move remains legal. A conditional move explicitly includes the opponent action that must come first.

An automatic reply is still a real submitted move. Before saving a branch, replay it from the correct position because a mistaken assumption can produce a legal but poor decision. Do not rely on a takeback, a voluntary reversal of the move, to correct it.