Why do many lower rated players drag out lost games

When I was younger and more than 100 points higher rated than now, I would often be asked after the game why I was playing out such dead lost positions against other experts, and seeing shocked faces after letting them know that I'd drawn or won them.  I've seen players lambasted for offering a draw in easily won positions and then getting shocked expressions when I would intervene and show how it really was a draw with best play.  Even with players having 2000+ ratings there can be big differences in the definition of dead lost.

Nobody's definition of dead lost is a position that is drawn with best play. Did you mean to say that even experts can misevaluate positions? That's hardly breaking news and I think you might be misunderstanding this thread if you think it makes a difference to what people have been saying.

Nobody in this thread has said anything about any positions that may or may not be lost.

What´s the problem? Somebody agrees to play a lower rated player, and whines when the opponent don´t resigns. Why not just end the game and win? He plays for fun, training etc, and if you not have the time, do not agree to play, and if it´s winning, just win.

look at my rating lol

I think another factor is that low rated players are very often beginners, and as such are simply not aware of the etiquette.

I know a guy rated approx 800(daily) who would drag out every totally lost endgame, down ~20 material points, a lone king running away from an army. He used to laugh and joke about it to me, and he found it amusing that sometimes his opponents would get annoyed and ask him why he didn't resign (bear in mind this is daily games, not live). I played against him often and found it really annoying, and I had to explain the etiquette several times before it sunk in. He just didn't seem to get that it was an annoying experience for the other player (possibly because he was low rated and hadn't experienced the situation from the other side).

He wasn't playing for tricks to win back material, or stalemate, or working on his endgame technique, or following a rule of "never resign" – he knew the game was fully lost, but just played until the end anyway.

Lower rated players can mis-analyze a position and think it is dead lost even when it isn't.  This thread is complaining about lower rated players playing on in lost positions (or at least positions they think are lost).

Also, when I've drawn or beaten experts from extremely inferior positions they were cases where best play on both sides would have been a loss for me but there were ways to complicate the position to require finding best play to be difficult for a human being (post mortems pretty much always showed that best play would have won for the other player).

This is a continuation of the old saying that to win a game you first need to reach a winning position, and then you need to actually win it.  A lot of players are able to do the first step but the faster play these past few decades has reduced how much endgame ability players usually need to win and somebody with good endgame play has a very legitimate reason to continue playing (heck, once I was in an inferior late middlegame/early ending against a player 500 points lower, with two fewer pawns and no real compensation, and I refused a draw offer figuring that there had to be some reason he was rated so much lower and his fear of playing out an endgame gave a pretty good clue as to what that reason was - I won).

A defender's job is not to simply throw in the towel when best play is still a loss.  It is to sidestep attacks, bait traps, set pitfalls, and do whatever it takes to make the opponent really earn the win.  In my experience if you have potential tactics that require the opponent to play carefully then even if you do lose (as most onlookers expected) the opponent generally does not begrudge you making them really earn the win.

One thread for jetoba and a different one for everybody else.

Nobody but you is talking about small margins. Why can't you grasp that?

There’s always a chance for your opponent to blunder... but I prefer to resign for sportsmanship

Define small.

I've drawn or beaten players after going down a queen for no compensation.

I've drawn or beaten experts when masters said I was busted.

I've seen countless players get up a piece and complain that their opponent did not resign their obviously lost position.  This is not the first thread on this subject and it comes down to how much of a material/positional deficit should trigger resigning against players of various ratings (I've resigned down an exchange against GMs when my counterplay petered out, I've played out positions down a piece against experts and squeezed out draws - sometimes wins and the lower the rating the more material I can be down and still play the game out - inadvertently making a touch-move mistake and dropping a queen against a 1200 makes for a difficult game but winning is still possible).

Particularly low-rated players have likely had their own come-from-massively-behind victories that their definition of being totally down is different from a higher-rated player, so they will play on just as much against higher-rated players (in hopeless positions) as against lower-rated players when the exact same position is not hopeless.

I'm not going to bother reading past this.

...a lower rated player often plays on even when a queen, a rook and about six bishops down. - OP

This is what the thread is about. You're just talking about your own thing.

Man, you're so arrogant, it's incredible.

More i read you, more i understand something about you, you blame people who inferior to you.
I don't know why you're like that, and if you think i conclude only of this thread, you're wrong.
On other thread, you're like that, you need to tell other what is good or not, particular to bad player or lower rated player.
Do you know you need a path to grind the ladder of chess, and there are a lot of disparity, some learn fast, other learn slowly, other learn in different time period.
And particular this thread about the resign, I'm really not on the same page as you, and i agreed with jetoba, cause the resign is just an etiquette and sometime, you might think the position is lost when he isn"t. I resigned and after with the analysis, i could get a draw at least, but my mental process of the game didn't tell me that.

Here :

I though, it was checkmate for me after in the game, i didn't  know i could sacrifice my queen to gain the queen and gain a game balance.
And you know, lower rated need to think, get error of game, etc ... to learn.
When i saw your pretentious behavior, about defining the loss or the win and when i saw your rating, it tell something deeper.
For you, only win are good, other are just lost of time cause you think error are just something you don't have to do in game of chess.

Maybe my assumption about what you think is wrong, so tell me the difference cause you let show through arrogance and cold analysis, like no feeling, no right to have fun and just try to get better, no more like liking the game, playing to feel, improve humbly.

There is no problem for me. When someone drags out a lost game, i barely even notice and i forget about the game almost as soon as it ends. I have enough other games to concentrate on, and a life outside of chess aswell  

I'm just curious about the correlation between lower rated players and not resigning lost positions. Some people here seem to think they're just carrying on for fun, others say they don't understand about etiquette etc.

If my opponent is about my rating and I plunder seriously and I know, I would win on his place, I resign. Maybe even too early sometimes. But I´m not so interested in dying slowly.... I had resently a game with a 1400 rated player, and he also played till the very (his) end. I enjoyed it nevertheless.

Seeing six bishops down included would increase my willingness to play on because that level of hubristic trolling has a very good chance of allowing an escape with stalemate.  If it was just a queen and a rook against a lone king then resignation would be more likely.

One thing decades as an arbiter has shown me is that at the lower rating levels K+Q vs K is a draw about half the time and K+2Q vs K is a draw about 90% of the time.

Many good coaches will tell their students to play on if the opponent is making unnecessary promotions, and will do so because of the much higher chance of escaping with a stalemate against such an opponent.

I don't hate on chess beginners about their chess. If you've seen me do this, please go ahead and show me. I could link you to threads where I've helped beginners. Where I've given them advice.

Sometimes, when I see somebody saying something stupid, I comment on it. This idea that I'm rude to people because they are weak at chess, is something that you've made up in your head. An assumption that isn't true.

FYI, that game you've posted doesn't apply to this thread. If you didn't see Qd8+, then you've lost. The game is over the very next move. That is not a game that you chose to not drag out by resigning. You either see Qd8+ and the game goes on, or you don't and it doesn't, so the game has no place in this thread.

To clarify what i'm talking about, couple of random losses of mine. One i blundered my queen away, the other is a hopeless endgame. Either way there's no hope of saving the game, so i resign them. 

These are the sort of games i'm talking about people dragging out, rather than continuing a game where you may be able to save with some trick. These are not those sort of games. 

I can't tell exact topic i saw you, i can only remember the idea of thread was about resigning and you posted something similar to this thread when you hate people continue to play in losing position. For you is just lose of time.

And jetoba is right about this cause, losing a position is subjective about the player and elo player.
And if i posted this game, is cause my intuition telling me to sack my queen, but i didn't find after cause i was bad in calculation that time. it was losing for me but the game wasn't .

And i can tell i was same about the fact people must resign in lose position and i realize after game, i lose and watching grandmaster game that the game itself he's beautiful and need to be played non only for win, but to discover the aspect of the mechanical landing of the end of the game (sorry for my bad english).

it's a mental trap too forfeit to fast when you think it's over, and the aspect of resigning, is telling about all elo.

     Beginners often don't know their positions are lost. They've probably lost games when they had positions as good as the ones you have in the games you complain about. If it's blitz or bullet you can surely spare them the couple of minutes. If this bothers you that much don't play long time controls vs low-rated beginners.