Pawn Promotion Etiquette

Ok, well it does involve some assumptions about the opponent.  When I (and I imagine these others) play chess, I don't resign when I feel like I have some kind of chance, be it based on the position, or ratings, or clock, or even technical difficulty.

So it's always true that when I continue to make moves, I believe there is some factor that will make it difficult for my opponent to win.  So when someone doesn't resign a trivially lost position to me, I imagine they either think it will be difficult for me (insulting) or they're playing on to waste my time out of spite for having a lost position.

"Don't let someone like that ruffle your feathers"  Ah, then you do understand it's insulting, you're just saying it's best to ignore it.  Sure, I agree.  I like to try to find the fastest mate possible for fun.  I don't recall ever underpromoting (well, sometimes when it's mate anyway, I'll do a rook just because heh).

You rub it in! You say "queen not good enough for you? You didn't like Freddy Mercury huh?" 

Hard to prove my thought process but to clear my own name, I play a lot of bullet chess so naturally in those games I would not resign if I have a chance with the clock. If you look at my standard games I will often resign early.

The position until the end had large imbalances and therefore chances of blunders. Whether you commenters find there was an unimportantly small chance of saving the games, that's your thing. 

Plenty of people play the game to the end. In my case, I was playing until he (theoretically) promoted (I felt like that was the appropriate time so if I needed to look back on the game it would be immediately clear why I resigned, and it also leaves the game in a more finished seeming position. That's my own perrogative.) to a queen was not even the end. This is more than within the rules and more importantly justifiable. You can't say playing a game until close to the end is not justified; it's a debate that never ends.

But for someone to promote to a less powerful piece in an attempt to play around with their opponent, while certainly within the rules, is hardly justifiable.

You didn't resign.  You made him play another 30 moves until you were checkmated.

Naa, it's easy.  E.g. he knew how to mate with a queen, but was rusty on his B+B, so decided to get some real practice (timed game against an opponent).

if you don't want us to assume anything about "your" reasons then don't assume anything about the opponent's reasons too. for all we know, he could be showing off, he could be practicing the mate, or he could even have misclicked.

if you would have resigned on a promotion to queen, i don't see much reason to not resign when he promoted to another bishop. were you hoping he wouldn't know it? or did it hurt your feelings and you just felt like playing on out of spite?

He promoted to a bishop, not the expected queen, so I wanted to see if he could actually do it or if I could manage a draw.

Look , you insulted the guy by not resigning so you broke etiquette first . If I were playing the very same opponent I would have resigned as soon as I went 2 pawns down for nothing . 

so he did it and that offended you?

 As I said earlier, if you want to "practice" an unnatural mate like that, don't do it with a person, let alone a stranger. I can assume the opponents reason. He told me it was "for fun" when I asked. "Fun" is not practicing a mate, nor an accidental misclick.

Sure, but I'm saying if you're basing the resignation timing on having a clearly lost position, it was clearly lost tens of moves before the B+B ending.

If you didnt like what he was doing you could have put a stop to it at any time by resigning but you chose not to , why blame him ? 

fair enough, i missed that. so well, maybe you have offended him first by not resigning, did you not even think about his feelings? :(

I totally understand your point but I can play out the game to the end if I want to, and he can promote to a bishop if he wants to. The virtue of pushing a little for a better result and underpromoting to poke around your opponent, however, is a stark one.

I can see your point.  You're making an assumption about your opponent's intent, but you've at least you're being logical about it.

Hey, I'm with you.  If it doesn't prolong the game, I'll make the underpromotion every time.  If it's mate in 2 with either a queen or a rook, you can bet I'm using the rook.

what a whinebox, just admit that both of you did nothing wrong already. if considering "etiquette" i'm pretty sure that it's widely considered more disrespectful to not resign than to underpromote, you are well beyond the level of playing out every game to the end already.

Playing for a better result has a good intention

Underpromoting for fun doesn't

It's that simple!

Maybe if it were more common that someone underpromotes just to have fun, it would be more widely recognized as disrespectful.

Somebody better call a waaambulance!

Yeesh, these threads.  Someone has a problem, they open a thread, no one agrees with them so they decide everyone else is absolutely wrong.  Rinse and repeat.

Normally, I try to avoid doing things in online games that seem to upset people around here (no matter how irrational I may consider them to be).  For example, I rarely use conditional moves except for immediate recaptures for that reason and I resign quickly (perhaps too quickly) when I'm busted (unless the opponent is so weak he needs to prove he can win it). 

Some people seem to like dragging lost games out.  I'm OK with playing to checkmate, but when someone who should know better and was moving fast suddenly starts moving as slow as possible when they're completely lost, I confess I find that annoying (and it serves as an incentive to be extra careful to not let them of the hook).  In this particular game, my opponent should have resigned by move 55 at the latest;  instead he played on at a week per move.  Finally, at move 65 there was a forced mate in 5 and I set up all variations in conditional moves, and finished with an underpromotion/checkmate.  And yes, I was being deliberately snarky, but I don't feel remotely guilty.

http://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=77789656

Here's a classic video with the same underlying attitude when someone refused to resign a totally lost game against an FM (and kept asking for draws along the way.  Amusing as all heck and some fun underpromotion along the way!  Classic:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4147