Can we do a conditional chain in Kotlin? or ignore it and go to the next operator?

private fun simulateFixtures(list: List<List<Team>>) = list.map { fixture ->
    fixture.toList().random()
}.shuffled().chunked(2)

Can you give a bit more detail? Not sure what your example code is trying to convey

based on that StackOverflow thread, I would say the canonical solution is something like:

foo.let {
    if (somePredicate) it.doSomething() else it
}

That matches

I think you'll struggle to find a more concise and readable way to write it than

let

+ `if`/`else`

What part do you want to run conditionally? All operations look general enough to be done in one go. If you have only 1 fixture in the list passed as argument, you wouldn't even need to call this method, because you would just pick the winner and the result would not be a list or 2-element lists anyway

@Sam well, the kotlin devs have explicitely not added the ternary operator:

condition ? onTrue : onFalse