Conditional Moves in Vote Chess

I think 'tally now' is a very good idea. It is like a better version of conditional move. If the move is obvious, then vote early and save time. There is also no danger of one or two people screwing up the votes as with conditional moves. I would support 'tally now'. It would benefit all kinds of groups rather than just a small few.

Hmm..? You say this and yet you still want conditional moves? You will face the same problem except it will be out of your control because you will be FORCED to vote prematurely.

Yes I do Sora... I don't want players stressing did I make it in time to vote or to make the discussion... At least with conditional moves they know exactly how much time they have to discuss and make a decision by, no second guessing... as we all get busy with work and family, caught up, and if we know the exact time we have to move by we know where we stand...

Just like you guys wouldn't want to be FORCED to have CONDITIONAL MOVES in your games, I wouldn't want to be FORCED to have TALLY NOW forced in our games.

In other words, I have no objections to TALLY NOW being introduced as long as it is an OPTION... I wouldn't stand in it's way to let it happen when some do want it.. I don't see why you all are resisting something others want as long as it is an option.. I REPEAT - It will not affect you...

Sometimes our discussion is over quickly. It's decided instantly what we want to vote, as it was in the plan from a previous move, (which is when a  conditional move would be ideal), and also there are forced moves times which would be fine to use TALLY NOW,  but sometimes we are split on votes, we are discussing and analysing right to the last 8 hours... and sure, I know, the captain would not be silly and use the TALLY NOW option at those times, so am not stressing about that. But this is what I am most concerned about... the times we think ok we are pretty much convinced which way to vote, and the captain has called the move, and possibly has hit TALLY NOW, then another player comes along and shows why that move is not good and offers an alternative move, and the discussion is kick started again and sometimes the minds of others has been changed... So the captain could have easily pressed the TALLY NOW button at the point most were saying ok, let's go with this move and we would have missed the opportunity to change that vote. I have seen this happen often enough to say I don't want TALLY NOW in our games... decisions being changed. Even after we have called the move and the team is voting for what has been asked for, someone has come along and thrown a spanner in the works and shown us that wasn't the best move to call... I have then sent out newsposts to call in extra voters in to help pass the NEW MOVE CALLED... I don't want to lose that protection. TALLY NOW would cause that protection to be lost. 

The problem with this is (especially if you have a small team) that you can't recruit more players into the game to overcome a blunder vote as I've seen many times.  Example:  There are 5 people playing in a game.  3 have already voted before the blunder was realized.  Now in order to avoid it, the group posts in the notes or sends out a news bulletin asking for members to join this game and vote for move x instead of move y.  If there was an automatic "tally now," this would prevent the possibility of a distress call being effective. 

And I believe that a manual "tally now" by group admins would put way too much power in the hands of the admins.  As soon as a vote they liked was passing, they could hit the tally now button.  Or even if they cast the first vote, they could then hit the Tally Now, and the move is made with no discussion whatsoever.  This would totally invalidate the whole concept of Vote Chess.

And regarding the conditional moves: I do think that it would be a programming nightmare to try and make this work to anyone's satisfaction.  I'm not a programmer, but this honestly sounds like a lot more work than it's worth, and I would rather they spend the time on your Custom Trophy Idea (or my "Trophy Showcase for Groups" idea ).

If it is implemented tho, I would imagine that it would be similar to the draw and resign features that at least 50% of the players voting for that move would have to add the conditional moves for it to take effect (so the 1 or 2 votes (even tho they were the ONLY conditional votes (thus 100% of the conditional votes, but only 5% of voters for that move) would not kick in).

Fair points, but don't the exact same risks exist for conditionals?  What if the conditional is a blunder?

 I feel like everytime I bring something up, you're talking about something else completely different. Anyways, since I feel like this argument has lost my interest, I will summarize my opinion as follows

-Tally now, good idea, easy to implement, will potentially benefit many groups.

-Conditional move, unclear idea, benefit only a small number of groups, not worth the time to implement.

You can bring the idea up to the staff if you want. I can't stop you. But if I and many others could not fully understand what you want, then how do you expect the staff to write the code for it? Also, the feature is only beneficial to only a small number of groups (organized groups), and I'm not even sure if they would want to use it. Why would chess.com spend the time to implement this feature?

If you are serious about this, then I recommend you draw out a clear procedure on how you want it to work. Pretend you are coding the feature. "If I click button X, a window pops up with Y and I click on Z to..." etc.

YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES!!!!

That's exactly what I just said, why it is bad... I belong to several groups and have seen them also send out newsposts or dropped a note in their group notes or sent me a personal message to say "we need help to change the winning vote, it's a blunder, please come help".. TALLY NOW would have destroyed that opportunity....

I can live without conditional moves, and don't want to waste staff's time doing something that others just won't use... though I wonder just how many leaders would love the idea but haven't seen this forum... something that will remain unknown, as always... there are only a few people commenting there, hardly enough to warrant convincing support one way or the other

I can't live with TALLY NOW for all the reasons given before, and reinforced by William (Billium248).. that is, if it wasn't made an option.

But like I said over and over and over again, I don't object to anything being introduced that is an OPTION.

I just kept reinforcing why I hate the idea of tally now... and have well and truly justified good reasons not to be forced to have it in our games...

How about we both send a ticket to staff William, and drop the link to the forum... it might help make it happen sooner, rather than later or never... not exactly a controversial request and had some decent support... well from people who did view it... as many suggestions would simply go unsighted...

To be honest, I'm still so happy about the "My Vote Chess" page, that I don't feel like bugging the staff about anything else just yet.   

Yes, I'd love for the groups to have their own Trophy Showcases, and be able to send and receieve them to/from other groups just as we do as individuals.  I imagine that anyone running or involved in a league here would agree - tournaments deserve trophies, and groups should be able to receive them and have a place to display them.  I'd also love to be able to send and receive trophies that we upload the picture for (as you suggested).  At the moment this can only be done in tournaments.

However, I can acknowledge that while both of these things would be NICE, neither of them are really NEEDED (like the "My Vote Chess" page certainly was).  I'm not sure how many things are on their "To Do" list, but at the moment I'd be satisfied with a simple, "We've heard your request, and we've added it to the list." 

Thanks again to the staff for finally providing us with the "My Vote Chess" page that so many of us were asking for!!!  I can't tell you how happy I am to finally have this tool!!! 

Me too, considering it was a week ago I did put up the 2 suggestions...

We've heard your request :)

I actually don't feel like making any suggestions for the site anymore... I have made numerous over 2 years and can't recall any ever having anything done about them... wasting my time... the most I ever got was we have heard your request...

I have better things to do...

I'm sure staff have seen what I wanted to say, so will delete it now, no need to leave up...

I have had numerous suggestions I've made implemented, and more that have not been.  I trust that the staff is prioritizing as they see fit, but I also expect that in order in increase the likelihood of my suggestions being seriously considered it's up to me or others in the community who can also see its value to make sure that any and all warts on the original idea have been thought through and options for their resolution proposed -- while the idea may yet prove feasible, that has not yet happened here.

I'm even more surprised, though, at this post in light of this:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/suggestions/and-another-vote-game-times-out?page=1

Which you were in support of early on, and which chess.com was quick to respond to and resolve.  I don't think you're being terribly fair to Erik and his staff in this regard.

I'll offer some suggestions for what I see as the biggest challenges with this idea, even though I think that there are both better solutions to the problem you are trying to resolve with this and also far higher priorities in general:

Risk that a single user voting for a conditional invokes that move without the group's consensus:
Require that enough votes for conditionals are registered by requiring that if the total vote count for a given move be above a proportion of the vote count for the last non-conditional

Interface challenges in light of the variability of the team's move (need to handle the if we move J then K scenario):
Limit the ability to vote for conditionals to only when it is not your team's move (as the current interface works for individual games) and limit conditional lines to the next move only (to avoid re-introducing the problem on the second move)

Alternatively, you could have the admin post an entire conditional line that the team votes to either approve or reject.

I hope that helps at least prompt some further discussion around these challenges, although I still struggle to see how all of the objections raised against the automated "tally now" functionality (which I still believe is a superior solution) don't all still exist within any implementation of conditional moves.

I'm not talking about this one suggestion TheGrobe...

I have no problem if this particular one suggestion doesn't get through, as I said in an earlier comment I can live without it... and I did say I don't want to waste staff's time on something not wanted by many, did I not?

I have made many suggestions in the past, sent tickets.. to help for example admins deal with team matches better... have more control... at least know which admin sent the challenge, at the moment we get the full list of admins who are in the opponent's group and have to send messages trying to find out who sent it, if we need to discuss the parameters... have also asked for the option to have automated locking dates, whether be 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks or 4 weeks, or no set automated locking date, so both teams have the option to choose which suits and no one has to chase up opponents to say are you ready to lock and then wait and wait til they respond... and it will help perturb teams from sneaking in higher rated players and deleting lower rated players AFTER their opponent has locked... 

How many times kokino in the world league has to send out alerts to teams to hurry up and lock, they are late... there are many matches involved in tournaments and many tournaments drag on and on because of late locking... But to me, the more important benefit is that it will stop sneaky/shifty tactics by teams to modify their team's registration after their opponent has locked... especially in tournament games...

And the custom made trophies suggestion... didn't hear boo from staff and it has been a week.. just to say at least they have sighted the suggestion, especially after I did ask if they had...