Suggested Feature - Always promote to queen when time below 'x' (30 seconds perhaps?)

As per topic. It'd be convenient to have a conditional auto-promote similar to the conditional 3-fold repetition claims.

Well! It could be controversial extending all these auto-features. Where will the limit be. Soon this is extended to "Always chose the best move suggested by Stockfish."

Always chosing to promote to Q can be ok I think.

But if you automatically chose what to promote to based on position (and also maybe on time which also is a part of the game) it could be controversial.

In this case it is about lettng a machine making a decision for you based on the game position (including time)

Analyzing a position and reading a clock are two absolutely different things, #2. That slippery slope argument doesn't make sense here.

The clock and position are still together a game situation and letting a comp automatically make a decision for you based on the game situation is somewhat like getting help from a computer.

If you chose to always promote to a Q it's more like your own decision.

I don't think the slippery slope applies at all here. It's arguably even more like over the board chess. In an over the board game you can grab a queen seeing a promotion coming from a few moves away. Online though you have to either premove it, which is not always possible, to automatically get the queen or you have to deal with a slow popup that eats precious time. Another option would be to simply make it a checkbox in the game window, but that'd be quite ugly.

What's the purpose of the proposed feature? It's easy to access the "auto-promote" setting during a game in slow time controls.

@Toadofsky,

I think his reasoning is that he wants to be able to have the both abilities (choosing what to promote when there is plenty time and to promote to queen automatically when the time is critical) at the same time.

Yes, it's true that in slow time controls it's no problem to select what to promote but that is only when you are not in time trouble. You know, slow time controls can turn into bullet like time pressure as well. So with an "x second option" he gets to have both luxuries at the same time.

I'm neutral about the suggestion by the way.

That makes some sense (and I too am neutral on the proposed feature).

Honestly, I wish an in-game "enable/disable autopromote" setting change (from the game screen settings menu) weren't permanent, but maybe that's just me...

In WinBoard I use a method that gives you the best of both worlds: detour under-promotion. When you drag the Pawn forward to the promotion square (like you would normally do), or use a click-click move, you always get a Queen. In the rare case you want another piece you just drag the Pawn backwards about half a square, to see it morph into a Knight, and then move that Knight forward to the promotion square. So the Knight is always available, with almost no time penalty, just a slightly different mouse motion. When you want Queen, there is no overhead at all.

All other under-promotions are also available, (but you never need them, of course): just draw the Pawn backward further before moving it to the promotion square. A good compromise between required mouse-handling precision and overhead was to have it change into the next piece once every half square. Cycling through Q->N->B->R->Q->... as long as you drag it backwards, freezing the choice as soon as you start dragging forward.

How about this scenario?

You have a few seconds left but a promotion to Q will lead to stalemate.

An option to toggle the auto-promotion settings at the board screen could be an idea without getting into the settings menu.

Auto-executing a decision made by the player can be ok.

However I dislike also letting the comp make a qualified decision for you.

An even worse option would be "Auto-promote to Q whenever this doesn't lead to stalemate."