Today's game was raggedy, but I'm glad I didn't resign.

I won a 30min game by a hair today. I had no heavy pieces, but on the other hand my opponent's king was too far away to work in synchrony with his rook. Down to 4 seconds, he resigned.

It wasn't my proudest game. I didn't pull off anything impressive. I couldn't annihilate his bishop because my own bishop was too awkwardly angled. I couldn't send in a vertical battery because his rook was in the way. I was mentally tired out from too much ultrabullet and got hopelessly confused when I tried to calculate, so I stuck to small moves that might provide useful positioning sometime down the line.

I did however gain valuable endgame practise. I was toying with the idea of resigning, but I knew Avetik Grigoryan from ChessMood would facepalm at the thought, so I pushed myself to apply some warrior attitude. I doubled my rooks and attacked my opponent's pawns. I even managed to equalize and end up a pawn up. 

It ended up being a valuable perspective-taking exercise. Even in lost positions, weighing up lines and angles carefully can uncover something useful. Rooks, as I just mentioned, can be doubled and deployed to clean up pawns. Even an isolated king - I forgot to centralize my king - can be useful if it's backing up my one last pawn.

It's ironic; I gave up on winning that game somewhere at the 15 minute mark and decided to just treat it as a learning experience. What a good thing I didn't resign.