Resignation

Why is it considered rude to NOT resign? It would seem to me that resigning is quiting in the middle of a game. I'll be honsest I really don't like resigning games.

You play a lot of online chess. Here is one game you played recently with 14 day limit for each move. 

The game took six months. What was the point of playing on after he got a queen on move 53? Sure, he could die of a heart attack but otherwise, the game was over. 

After spending six months playing the guy, didn't you have a little respect for him?

/ I take it back after looking over the rest of the game.  I would have told him to resign after move 38.  

To be fair the guy I was playing is a friend in real life.

nice finish

After you've played a few thousand games certain positions are trivially winning/losing. Experienced players resign to save time and energy.

If you're unfamiliar or still have that feeling that "anything can happen" then it's not rude to keep playing. In fact newer players are encouraged to play until mate to gain that experience and knowledge of how to win a winning position.

Playing on is wasting your time in addition to that of your opponent....

Being down a piece in a middle game against a semi-experienced player is perhaps similar to thinking that you can safely drive through a hurricane or a blizzard.  You might make it but the probabilities are significantly against you.

Would you normally play someone who it 400 rating points higher than you are?

Being down a piece is like doing that.

Shake your opponent's hand and offer congratulations and start another game or examine the one you just played to find better moves. 

Are you a piece ahead?  What are your chances of winning? really? 

If they are very high, then your opponent would be better off analyzing the game and figuring out how to AVOID getting into such a dire position rather than spending time figuring how to get out of them....

You even confirm my opinion in your last three sentences.

One mor thing....I don't consider players rated under 1300 to be experienced.

Get 2000 combinations experience....Reinveld's 2  books entitled "1001..."

Those two books are great to have inside your head.

Then, always analyze your games....with your opponent....

Take a few lessons...

Some players, it seems, do nothing but play and expect, miraculously, to get better.  They may, but serious players, who want to play well and win as a result, STUDY.

And they, AND their opponents, RESIGN, when busted.

Good luck but that only helps if you study.

That last sentence is only true for coaches and parents who have not played the game seriously.

Playing a lost game without tools or hope is one of the big reasons some scholastic kids QUIT chess.

Why make them suffer for long periods when they KNOW they are busted....

I taught and coached and there were coaches rated 1400 who preached "Never resign".  They were poor coaches and worse teachers.  They are no longer coaching. 

So glad you didn't misquote me or only argue against my position with individual cases.... clearly I think it's a judgment call but the Scholastic Chess section of the USCF in training teachers and coaches has published advisories against the "Never resign" mentality.  Do some research. 

Re the individual cases, there are even GM and WC situations in which gross blunders have changed the outcomes but it's still legal to resign. And sometimes it shows strength and insight.

Here are some points to consider:

1) Normally a player only resigns if he thinks his position is lost.

Thus it does not depend on whether others thinks his position is lost, and it shouldn't.

2) Players, also lower rated ones, watch master games and here are examples of what can happen:

A) Let us say a master player sacrifices a queen and get a strong attack. But what do the lower rated player see? He sees a master losing a queen and yet continue to play the game. Later the master player manages to win the game. Thus the lower rated player has seen that you can win even being down a queen.

B) Or another example of a master player sacrificing a piece getting a strong attack. The defending player plays well, but in order to reject the attack he makes a counter sacrifice. What the lower rated player observes is that even in master games you can take turns in winning and loosing pieces.

3) You are supposed to play your game yourself, that means not asking for advice and evaluation from others. If your opponent suggest that you resign, then that is in fact forcing and advice on you. But you are supposed to play your game yourself, not taking advice or evaluations from others.

Based on above list of situations it is hopefully clear that if someone has the idea that it is rude not to resign, then that person need to take another look at the above situations and reconsider. It can also be concluded that you never ask your opponent to resign. Resigning is one's own choise based on one's own evaluations just like when you make a move.

I never said it appeared in what you wrote. It appears in what I first wrote.  And again, you don't respond. You make faulty ad hominem attacks.   As to misquoting, you quoted me as saying "without hope" when I wrote "without tools or hope".  You need a lesson or two in writing before you next comment here. Consider that. Who's the brick?  I thought you weren't going to waste your time responding to me. You didn't have the energy?  Apparently, now you do.

One last thing, talking about a game in which you were watching two very weak players play on and such and such happened and then something else is called "anecdotal evidence" and I am not quoting you or me. It's well-know as yet another faulty way of arguing a position.  Check it out BEFORE you embarrass yourself yet again...

I usually resign in a losing position against stronger players. When the opponent is weaker, or in time trouble, they are more likely to make a mistake to let me back in, so I play. I usually resign to move on to the next game, or to beat myself up for making mistakes myself, lol.

It's very debatable this one. One of the kids at my club resigned in a winning position against another kid the other week, inexplicably thinking he was losing.

Perhaps a reasonable compromise would be "never resign against others your own age, but do against adults if you think you should."

resigning and not allowing your opponent to checkmate is what is rude

they are angry becuase you resigned before letting them checkmate you

I don't like checkmating my opponent, or being checkmated.

Like seeing a good move and looking for a better one, it's usually not good to resign immediately after a big blunder.

In both tournament and club games I'll play at least a few more moves even if I'm something like a rook down for no compensation in a stale position.

Who cares!!

So do I.  Masters and GMs analyze their games briefly with their opponents in an important exchange of info truce.  I highly recommend it to all.  Of course, they are cool-headed even when not winning and smart enough to got to the place after losing...i.e. analysis of the game.