"As for OTB, you should probably do resign others as you would have them resign unto you."
Ah, the 11th commandment. No better way to show just how much you care than to resign nice and early!
"As for OTB, you should probably do resign others as you would have them resign unto you."
Ah, the 11th commandment. No better way to show just how much you care than to resign nice and early!
If you will not resign despite fully knowing that you have less than a 0.0001% chance to change the result and you are pissing me off, I cannot change your mind.
But I can consider you to be a jerk.
Thanks for the advice, PDubya.
Don't resign in online chess in case your opponent gets hit by a bus. LOL
If you will not resign despite fully knowing that you have less than a 0.0001% chance to change the result and you are pissing me off, I cannot change your mind.
But I can consider you to be a jerk.
Indeed you can (although I am unable to agree). But it's not just pure math when we're in a game; people get psychological feelings in their positions. If my mind is totally focused on a certain situation, then the game suddenly becomes lost, I may be disoriented, not feel like thinking, and maybe I just want to bash out some moves whether they matter or not. (Or maybe I no longer have the energy to take any leap of faith. Or maybe an irrational belief comes into my head that a blunder from my opponent seems more likely than it actually is.)
I do not, on the other hand, want to be told how to feel when I can't always control what my mood is going to be like, and how that may affect what I feel like playing on and what I don't. And I don't tell my opponent how to feel. It may even be that I am entirely certain I will win, but it's not my place to impose that on my opponent who may feel differently, rationally or not.
I don't know, one analogy could be where a doctor knows with certainty that some procedure will work on the patient. The patient does not fully trust the doctor however. You may advise the patient to do the procedure (of course in chess, discussions of when to resign would be outside of an ongoing game), but, I would think, you would still respect what the patient feels comfortable doing, even if you think, even know, that they are wrong. The problem is, the patient may not be able to know in the way you know, and to force that kind of person to do a procedure will still make them very uncomfortable.
No, I don't think the focus of chess should be on developing some kind of psychological perfection (whatever that means) where psychology never affects your resign choice (That could be its own game!). I think the focus of chess should be on playing good moves. Yeah, I would rather spend a few hours on the latter than the former. Even though that means not arbitrarily allowing some opponents to win (resign at the time they want me to) even though the rules quite objectively say otherwise (you have to checkmate before you win, no matter how "good" your position is).
I recently played 2 bullet games in a row where I blundered my queen, however, I did not resign, and in both instances I won, one with checkmate, the other on time. In such circumstances, not resigning is perfectly acceptable, and part of the fun.
But no wonder if players on bullet/blitz game doesn't resign. As the majority part of it was time control and even your down a piece or two, chances are you still can win the game.
In chess, resigning is considered not only dignified but also good manners when the game is clearly lost. Playing chess to the bitter end in a tournament is considered a waste of time and disrespectful of the person who won the game.
I don't know, one analogy could be where a doctor knows with certainty that some procedure will work on the patient. The patient does not fully trust the doctor however. You may advise the patient to do the procedure (of course in chess, discussions of when to resign would be outside of an ongoing game), but, I would think, you would still respect what the patient feels comfortable doing, even if you think, even know, that they are wrong. The problem is, the patient may not be able to know in the way you know, and to force that kind of person to do a procedure will still make them very uncomfortable.(...)
Again, I was talking about positions where both players know fully well how it will end.
So the better analogy would be that the patient agrees with you but his religious beliefs ban him from using antibiotics, and so he decides to pass the treatment.
Although the patient has the final word because it's his body, he is just an idiot.
I don't see, if your opponent realizes there is no hope it is respect for your superior play.
It's hope.
Hope, the last refuge of the hopeless.
I don't know, one analogy could be where a doctor knows with certainty that some procedure will work on the patient. The patient does not fully trust the doctor however. You may advise the patient to do the procedure (of course in chess, discussions of when to resign would be outside of an ongoing game), but, I would think, you would still respect what the patient feels comfortable doing, even if you think, even know, that they are wrong. The problem is, the patient may not be able to know in the way you know, and to force that kind of person to do a procedure will still make them very uncomfortable.(...)
Again, I was talking about positions where both players know fully well how it will end.
So the better analogy would be that the patient agrees with you but his religious beliefs ban him from using antibiotics, and so he decides to pass the treatment.
Although the patient has the final word because it's his body, he is just an idiot.
What does it mean to be fully aware of how it will end? I can somewhat relate to cases where the winning process is simple, but even then I don't know, for example, my opponent's willingness to carry it all out. I've played out, just for fun, positions against houdini where I was a clear rook up in a fairly simplified position but with queens and maybe a few minor pieces. I won, but the actual process of winning still required my mind to be looking at undefended squares, and there were still some times where I was about to play a move but then realized it would hang something. I did not think this would be the case until I actually tried it out.
So all sorts of random wonders, rational or not, may come into my head when I'm trying to factor in not just the winning technique in the abstract, but also what it would really feel like to carry it out. Your brain is still working even in pretty simple positions. You can make a mistake for which you know much better if your brain is turned off. Add to this my mood, which may make me more comfortable with some levels of certainty more than others (maybe there is something about a 1 in 1000 chance of saving a position that thrills me -- simply the fact that it may not thrill others doesn't make it so easy to draw the line for what is "absolutely ethical" or not. It's not so different from liking sharp vs quiet positions -- people have different dispositions), and in the end, yeah, I want the benefit of the doubt when it comes to my comfort level of when to resign.
There are some people who might play on because they are a sadist and just like the opponent to not enjoy himself, rather than as part of their strategic thinking. The people that are like this are indeed assholes, but I can't know who they are based on resignation point alone, since there are other possible reasons, as I have hinted, that they might not resign.
Indeed, if you give non resigners the benefit of the doubt, you will sometimes inadvertently end up being lenient to some bad people. Fine. That's much better than a false positive. The alternative is to try to turn resignation into some sort of skill (a pointless game within a game), and there will always be that awkward moment where you know your opponent wants to kill you after the game because he decided that he didn't like your resignation timing. Eww. I'd like to avoid that, but not by giving into him (that would concede that he was justified), lol.
I think that the pleasure of winning is enough to compensate for dislike of your opponent early resignation.
Tigers don't care how they win.
How much time and effort does it really take to play out an online chess game you're bound to win? Click -- move curser -- click. (I can see prolonging a game as an issue in an OTB game.) In either OTB or online games, how upsetting does it have to be if your opponent resigns early when you wanted to play it out?
In a related question, how much tempest can actually fit in a teapot? .... obvious answer, I know: "lots!" (tee-hee... just made myself laugh at my own "joke," which is almost as much fun as playing chess!)
I think it's worth playing out matches in the following scenarios:
1 minute Bullet. You might be down material, but up on time. Even if you've only got your King left you can run him around the board and hope for a draw on time, or even stalemate (this happens a lot) as players are premoving all over the place and it's easy for it to happen by accident.
3-day Tournament Matches.
I used to resign honourably whenever I fell behind a minor piece or was horribly outplayed. Now, I don't always do so...
As sad as it is to say there are a lot of cheaters on chess.com, especially as you start moving up the ratings. I've played several tournament matches where I've resigned, only for the opponent to later be banned. If I'd hung in there I'd have won both matches against him. If you're suspicious your opponent is playing well above his level, let the game keep going and you never know...
It's also worth continuing to play against slow players who use a lot of vacation time. Sometimes they'll just not move, and their time runs out. I once beat the Tournament Directory this way. Admittedly, this is not very honourable, but it's entirely within the rules.
Against regular moving, decent opponents it's still best to resign when things are hopeless. If you can see mate in say 3, and they make the first move of that combo then it's probably time to pull the pin. The thing is, you just never know when your opponent will get hit by a bus.
As for OTB, you should resign unto others as you would have them resign unto you.