NEVER RESIGN!

fortune favours the brave

I can only speak for myself and not anyone else.  Personally, I never resign, it's too humiliating for me and I personally feel it's like saying I'm a quitter although I know no one would think less of me if I did resign an obviously lost game.  Also, there are two annoying times when people do resign:  When you're one or two moves to checkmate and the fortunately less common time of resignation which is resigning while in fact winning.  There's even a web page about resigning when winning:

http://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/resigntxt.htm

Another reason I don't resign is the objective of chess is to checkmate the opponent's king, although I do respect everyone who does resign.

If it's personally right for you to resign a lost game, do so, but if it's personally wrong for you to resign, then don't.  And have fun no matter what happens, good game

Never resign

fight on

you have no legs

and no arm

and no head

but if your spirit is there

you still fight like a bear

never resign

never resign

fight to the end

never give in

BiggestSchnoz, this website's examples, besides being only a few, are irrelevant. Let's say you would have forced people to play a move instead of resigning in those games, they would have played something losing : if they had seen the good line, they would not have resigned.

The real question here is whether you should resign when you know your opponent has the technique to end the game. My answer is : yes, because even if there is 0.00001% chance that he blunders, it is not worth the time you spend moving your king around.

@linuxblue : reminds me of the dark knight in the Monty Python.

Yes it's rude to respond that they should offer you a draw or resign themselves, but I feel like it's even more rude (and actually against the rules of chess) to tell your opponent to resign. It is illegal and unethical to try to coerce your opponent to resign, that is their choice, not yours.

I will usually resign, except if my opponent asks me to resign in an unethical way, in which case I will move slowly and make the game last as long as possible (while not simply abandoning the game to let the clock run out, I will only use a proper amount of thinking time, as if it was a complicated position and not a queen down).

I'm fine if we're playing a rapid game and my opponent has to leave and asks me nicely to resign and explains why win he is in a winning position. If he says something like "Resign already" or starts insulting me, I will become frusterated and offended.

There is no law in chess that says that someone has to resign. A player is legally and morally entitled to play any legal move.

There is a law [ sort of] in chess that says that you have to agree to a draw in a mathematically drawn position. In that case the arbiter has the right to step in and call it a draw in ludicrous cases like king and bishop against king and knight.

I don't see how you can justify to be morally entitled to play a dead lost game, but not to trying winning a dead draw game. The legalist point of view is another one, though.

Post 57: Interesting, since people (especially those supporting women's titles) tend to say the opposite about female players, that they are put down.

Well... you can be nice to someone and at the same time let it be known you don't take them seriously as a competitor.  In fact I'm never nice to my opponent... it's not like I'm rude but I'm not going to ask how their day's going or anything.

Probably not what she was talking about, just pointing it out...

It's interesting because I am more likely to do that polite stuff, yet I may come off as "more rude" when I play on at an inconvenient time.

I suppose those guys could be saying things like aww you played so well, in like a sarcastic way, although I think if that were the case it would be quite obvious. Even if they were being, sincerely, nice simply because they believed the woman to be inferior and wanted to go easy on her with their words, that's not exactly going to scare women off, is it? In other words I wouldn't really call that a negative reinforcement to a woman playing.

In fact, I'd go as far to say that most men (myself included) would be excited to see a woman actually joining them in a tournament.

resignation shouldnot be premature specially playing against a very weaker oponent.we can resist a little bit and see what he does.maybe weaker oponent lacks good technique to convert his advantage.

look at Walther,Edgar - Fischer,Robert James zurich 1959.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7127

I agree tesla1, but that does not apply to a position with one less queen where both players are rated >1500.

great link!

Again, I am not criticizing the ones who want to resign later than I do, I criticize those who would never resign.

better to just watch a flick or something.

Well said!!!

Estragon wrote:

It is extremely rude to ask your opponent to resign. 

There is no rule, written or unwritten, which requires a player to resign, although most decent players can recognize a lost cause and respect the person who inflicted it upon them enough to tip the King.  But it is absolutely unacceptable to ask or demand your opponent resign.

I'm happy to play as long as my opponent wants to. If he (or she) wants to play on, even though I judge it as a hopeless postition, I choose to admire their grit. Make me prove it. I subscribe to a defense of infinite resistance. I've won "hopeless" games on more than a few occassions because I would not go quiet into that good night.