When to resign - Etiquette - An honest appeal

Call your opponent rude, but maybe he wanted to play on. 

Nice vicious attack forked_again. Well done! Except...

I was chatting with my opponent during almost all of the 15+ games I played against him. He become my friend here soon after we played the first game. None of that what followed the first two games was played seriously. It was all in jest. In fact, him and I commented on blunders. If you see my history, you will see most of the times I had black against him I played the QGD and with black e4 so that he could play sicilians, because those were his openings as he told me. I played my usual way for all of those matches, not thinking much and that made for good banter.

Maybe. Well within his/her rights. Well within my rights to block him/her too

@forked_again, if you want, i can provide you games in which I was playing more seriously and swindled my opponent. Then you can call me hypocrite with real games in your arsenal. Let me know if you're interested. I'll provide the links...

FOR THE LAST TIME, U DONT DESERVRE THE WIN IF U DONT CONVERT

FOR THE LAST TIME; IT'S NOT ABOUT THE CONVERSION, THE WIN OR DESERVING ANYTHING.

If anything, it's about an appeal for beginners to not get "contaminated" with the bug of never resigning and then find themselves unwelcome in serious chess OTB.

yes but its not allowed to say U CANT PLAY ON U HAVE 2 RESIGN

Again, you do not consider that your opponent may be a rank beginner or a much weaker player than you. Maybe he just doesn't realize that he is lost. Would you resign if you didn't see you were lost?

Maybe what you aren't understanding is that playing until checkmate (or stalemate or out of time) is not bad etiquette. It's just part of the game. The whole point of the game of chess is checkmate. That's literally the point of the game. So playing until then is how the game is supposed to be played. Resigning is an option, but it's up to each individual person if they want to do that. It's poor sportsmanship to expect the other person to resign. 

Ok, that's a perfectly valid opinion. Many in here share it. I don't. I think it's counterproductive and usually does a lot of harm to the overall chess community to have beginners become non resigning fanatics.

You think it's not unsportsmanlike to play a lost endgame. I respect that. Do you respect that I do consider it unsportmanlike on account of lost time, dread and a general feeling of the opponent being annoying just because they can?

I have done that a lot. I have resigned pawns down, a piece down. I have done it "classical" games elsewhere. But that's my way or rolling... Other people roll in different directions.

This player was a bit suspicious, but that doesn't mean much. What I mean by "suspicious" is that he played a lot of good moves (not that they were that hard to spot) in time trouble and never made it easy to mate him. So I assume he knew how to "defend" that mating patterns and knew the position was lost. IIRC, he also offered me a draw before we reached the lone rook endgame.

What are you calling lost? -3 in material? -5 in material? I would argue that if you are down a full rook but you have decent attacking pressure you should absolutely not resign because you could easily get a checkmate below 1k. Only down a rook or more with no attack should you resign. You only resign a lost position if it is a given that your opponent could convert, you resign to avoid wasting your opponents time, not to give your opponent an early win. I have even seen people at 1000 rapid resign because they blundered a piece on move 10, which seems insane to me. 

To your last question, no. I don't consider it unsportsmanlike because of lost time. The reason is because both players agreed to that time before they started. It's like saying its unsportsmanlike that both players have two knights to start the game. If both players agree to the time limits, then there can be no getting annoyed. How can it be annoying when you get what you want? You wanted to play for 3 minutes, you can't be annoyed that you got your full 3 minutes. 

Maybe the solution is to play different time limits. If you are worried someone will waste the last couple minutes of the game. Then play, for example, a game where you have 5 minutes, but they have 3 minutes. That way you already have those two minutes. 

Opinions... Would you resign K vs R+K? Would you resign if your opponent had an unstoppable passed pawn, no pieces on the board, just say... 4 locked pawns on each side? Would you resign if you were in time trouble and were an entire rook down with no reasonable counterplay and your opponent had half his time and you had under 20 seconds? The answer to all those for me is YES. But your mileage may vary...

Fine, you're entitled to your opinion. I have my own, which I have already explained here. Also, noticed I asked if you respect my opinion. I do respect yours. I think your points are quite valid, even when I disagree with your conclusion. Can you say the same about my opinion and my points? Or are you going to try and invalidate them just for the sake of trashing my opinion?

You found some good exceptions to my rule, which I should make some concessions for. Above 800 blitz, 900 rapid, you should resign for any basic checkmate (K+R v K), (K+Q, K) (K+2R v K) or any unstoppable assisted checkmate that you can see. I would not include K+2B v. K in that because that checkmate in a little bit harder. Usually I also do resign for an unstoppable passed pawn or obvious promotion because it leads to a basic checkmate 99% of the time. For the last example, I would resign in that situation because there aren't attacking chances (counterplay) which was my original rule. Generally, resignation means that for the rating you are at, you are expecting that your opponent is pretty much guaranteed to convert it. 

(Above 800 blitz, 900 rapid, I think pretty much everyone can finish you off with K+R and K+Q vs. King, although these mates are a little tricky.) This might be an difference of opinion unresolvable without data. 

The point is not that you have resigned games when you were down what you thought was decisive material. Apparently your immense psychic powers enable you to determine when your opponent is playing on just to annoy you rather than because he thinks he can still draw, but to refuse to finish the game and then block your opponent seems to be an example of the kind of inconsiderate behavior for which you rage against your opponent and anyone like him.

Did I finish the game? Sure, we drew.  I didn't deprive my opponent of his well deserved draw, but that doesn't mean I have to condone that behavior. As I don't have to condone it (just as he didn't have to resign the game), I decided to just keep the opponent out of my chess life.

Once again, my intention with this thread was to appeal to beginners not to make themselves non resigners and then carry that to serious OTB chess...

You are being contradictory to the point that your statements don't make sense. You said "well-deserved draw" and then implied that you do not condone his behavior. If you want to discourage this behavior, you should have finished him off in order to dissuade him from not resigning again. Because he got away with a draw, he will think that not resigning in such a position is a good idea.