To Resign or Not to Resign

The topic of this article is resignation, or to be more precise, premature resignation. I'm pretty sure that most of you can recall a game after which you regretted your resignation. It's quite irksome to find out that you overlooked a good defensive move or even the winning one when it's too late.

There might me many reasons for 'bad' resignation in chess: miscalculation, belief that a position is lost (when it's not), psychological factors (playing against much stronger opponent), time trouble etc. There are also occasional "beyond game" reasons like famous Hou Yifan's resignation in 2017 at Gibraltar Masters to protest against tournament pairings, but that's not the "type" of resignation to be considered here. We'll deal only with pure move misses - technical stuff.

I picked three games for this article. All the games feature known and strong players who missed their chance to survive or even win. I decided to present the games as puzzles since finding the move yourself will be definitely more instructive and fun than being given a move. In all of the following positions a player who is to move has just resigned.

Good luck and have fun. Best moves await!

Game 1
In this position White resigned after 29... Rc5 - the reason must have been the threat of Rc1+. What's the best move saving White?

Game 2
After 20...Bg4 White didn't see any chances against Bf3 etc. There is however one move to save White.

Game 3
Black resigned after 36.Rd1 probably because of possible Nxd4. There is one winning move for Black in this position.

Thank you for reading the article, I hope you enjoyed the games and solved the puzzles. If you'd like to dig deeper into the issue of resignation I strongly recommend the following articles:

- "When Is the Right Time to Resign?" (2010) by Jeremy Silman
- "When Should One Resign?" (2011) by Natalia Pogonina