Your Opponent Won't Resign Be Creative!

We all run into someome who will not resign in a game where he is completely lost. Instead of being upset over this, be creative!  Try this little puzzle to see what I mean"

This problem has an alternate solution for White's 7th move.

Idea comes from a line not played in vote chess Ponziani Power by some of our players.

Dude that is awesome, great post

Do  you see the alternate solution for the 7th move?

you could promote to a rook a queen or a horse.

If you promote to a rook or queen then you mate immediately and do not get the pleasure of watching your opponent queen a pawn.  So my solution is to promote to something other than a queen or rook.

[this problem or I should say a similar problem was thought of by some of the Ponziani Power team members per a game our opponent would not resign.]

If possible, try to mate the stubborn opponent with pawns. It's the most embarrasing loss.

Enjoy playing the devil's advocate?  Or are you really so inexperienced at chess that you don't find certain positions trivially winning yet?

When an opponent does not resign when the position is completely lost with no chances of redemption there is nothing wrong with enjoying the process of finishing the game rather than pouting.  So this is an alternate to pouting. not-pouting.

I am glad that in my long chess career that I very rarely ran into an opponent who could not resign--it was actually a form of respect to resign what many would think of as early.

This was at the highest ranking--the opponents knowing your skill level and maybe having played you before, resign when they know they are lost and assume you will find the winning way.  I could give several examples of this..

Just to give one example [which is in my games--two game match]--my worthy opponent knew he was lost and delibertly gave me "if" moves so I could do an epaulette mate! This is sportsmanship!

Nothing wrong with playing out the game most of the time.

The exception to this rule, as I see it, is in CC tournaments. The prime example being from one of my own games. The player has a king and two pawns left. The pawns are stuck and the only piece which can be moved is his king (He cannot get at my pawn structure with it so there is absolutely no chance of pawn promotion for him). I have a Queen, Bishop, Knight and three pawns. I will check mate him in a few moves time but the tournament is 14 days per turn so he can drag this out for weeks. It has been a lost position for around four days now (I promoted a pawn to a queen yesterday) and he moves at a rate of about one turn per day, sometimes two. In my opinion this just holds up the tournament. This is an example of an instance where resigning would be polite.

Rules are rules though so, if he wants to continue he is completely entitled to do so. Personally I find it irritating.

I suppose it is somewhat my own fault for entering a 14 day per move tournament.

At least he only has a few moves before checkmate.  But that's why I don't play 14 day per move games any more.  I liked having that flexible time schedule in case I would be away from a computer for a while but not long enough to justify using vacation, until I played an opponent who apparently thought that he couldn't make any moves any sooner than 14 days.  Or else once every two weeks he had to load up, trek into town for supplies, visit an internet cafe, make his move, and then head back home only to do it again two weeks later.  Yep, I learned my lesson with that one and now tend to stick with 3 days per move games, but no longer than 5 or 7.

And the award for completely missing the point goes to.....

trakoz 

I think 7. e8=N works

Ah. I think nothing is quite similar to the experience of being "creative" (or nonchalant, as I might call it) and playing cute moves to finish off an opponent--especially when nonchalance causes carelessness and a resultant stalemate blunder.

The best, most practical way to finish off an opponent who won't resign is to play the best moves and checkmate him as quickly as possible.

@Mandy711: Being checkmated with a Pawn (or Pawns) should not be embarrassing.

Yes, 7. e8=N is the alternate solution.

And yes in correspondence chess it would be irritating if someone did as Geng mentioned.

And, yes, if you do not wish to be creative you can just plain win--that is always an option.  If you think you will blunder being creative--don't do it.

You will find that only very poor players play to check mate in correspondence.  A player who knows more about chess would not do this unless he had a personal grudge.

and for sure the award for completely missing the point goes to trakoz...

Lots of fun ways to win the position. I kind of like 1. a4 bxa4 2. b5 axb5 3. a6.

By the way, I never feel upset by being on the winning side of "completely lost."

I've sometimes had to checkmate my opponents...no problem, as long as they don't play really slow, which they usually don't.  If my opponent has a forced mate I'll often play it out and allow the checkmate  

Here is probably a controversal statement.  There is a correlation between players who are willing to resign in a lost position and the chess strength of those players. The stronger you are, the more willing you are to resign in a lost position.

The thing is (not that I am a strong player. It's just my opinion) there are certain positions that can be learned from by playing on. I wouldn't automatically resign because I am losing if there is still some play left in it. Then you have positions that you know are hopeless ( like the one I described in my earlier post). In a situation like that I would much rather just put myself out of my misery and take it to computer analysis to find out where I went wrong with a view to not ending up in the same situation again.

I suppose some people play on in a hopeless position in the hope that you will be careless enough to hand them a stalemate. As is their right I guess.

I had an opponent who would not resign so I loaded up a string of conditional moves to force the play a little. However in my haste I made a huge blunder in the conditional moves. I resigned immediately.