Resignation

I'm curious if any of the people who get very annoyed has ever said to a much weaker opponent who plays on in a hopeless situation something like: I don't feel like I need the practice in this position, so you might want to resign.

Does the sanctity of good sportsmanship go both ways? That is, does the "injured" player have any obligation to treat the person doing the injury as if he's acting in good faith? Is it really good sportsmanship to say that when someone does something that annoys me, I'm never going to play against that person again because I know he is doing it for a bad reason?

If the other person is refusing to resign just to be irritating, then obviously that person is a jackass and should not be playing with others. But despite the certainty some have that this is always or nearly always the motivation for this behavior, other than assertions that this is true, I've never seen any indication of it. Every explanation I've seen given for why someone would continue playing has been based on good faith, even if you might disagree with it. Is everyone of these people lying about their reasons?

It may well be a law of the chess universe that playing on is bad form. But if that is the case, I would guess that most people who do it do so out of ignorance of the "law," which may not be an excuse in court, but certainly defeats a claim of willfull misbehavior.

The original post in this latest of so many threads on this topic was from someone who was particularly annoyed with a person not resigning in blitz games. I don't think there is anyone who has argued that that position is valid, even the strongest advocate of the resign-immediately side. That seems to indicate that at least some of the righteous indignation is not justified.

Just to be clear: I'm not trying to justify any particular behavior. I'm trying to open the discussion to one of what is the appropriate response to behavior someone thinks is unsportsmanlike.

For the record, sometimes I resign rather quickly even against weaker players when I have blundered away a piece. Sometimes when I'm way up in material, my opponent does not resign, and it has yet to strike me that he or she is doing it to annoy me. More than once I have said to my opponent that there's no hope of me winning here and I'm happy to resign. I tend to communicate with other people while I'm playing, and try to keep the situation friendly. I don't like playing with jerks, whether they beat me or lose to me. Losers and weak players don't have a monopoly on poor sportsmanship.

To be honest, I haven't read every post in this thread, but I want to give my opinion anyway. I feel that resigning is more of a compliment to the other players skill, insight of the game or his ability to spot and (a)buse my blunder than it is a direct insult when someone isn't resigning (even in a losing posistion).

Furthermore, at the level of chess I'm playing right now (I'd say advanced beginner), I still learn a lot by continue playing in a lost position (just to see how the opposing player will crush me, or to see if I can still save the game). I'll resign when I have the feeling there is nothing left to learn. If things are really bad for me, I generally ask the opposing player if he minds playing on (thereby satisfying his hunger for my resignation)

 Nicely put. "Nothing left to learn" is a good way of expressing this. In that regard, the issue is whether the opposing player wants to participate in your learning even if he or she gets little or nothing out of it.

I think communication in that situation should resolve any discomfort. I feel that if the other guy is tired of flogging me, I'm happy to resign. I think one difficulty on the Internet is that it is much harder to make a human connection. You can't physically shake hands and greet each other before the game.

why don't all the people who get so terribly offended by opponents not resigning, join a group that agrees in some kind of group constitution that...

I will resign...
...if i blunder
...if i go more than X points behind in material
...if my opponent states that he/she is bored
...if i lose my queen/bishop/rook etc
...if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle ( oops wrong forum )
...if my opponents rating is higher than mine

surely if a player feels that their opponent is in such a weak position that they should resign , then the game could be finished off fairly quickly - i find that some people like to resign when 1 move away from checkmate

wagrro> surely if a player feels that their opponent is in such a weak position that they should resign , then the game could be finished off fairly quickly

Not at all. As one gets stronger, one sees victory farther and farther in advance, and the only type of opponent that I gripe about is the sort that knows they are lost, but then plays very slowly to drag out the game as long as possible. 

i totally agree with this gripe - suddenly stretching out you play to max allowed time, when up until a point you played at a much quicker pace, indicates bad sportmanship in my opinion, but if you keep up your average pace you can fight on to the end

I hope you don't find any problem with that.  I do it all the time - usually more than 1 move from checkmate - as long as it can be forced, there is really no point in continuing to play.  Same goes for forced draws.

 And the reason people keep playing in lost positions is that you'll forget to move, and they'll end up winning on time.

Sometimes people say that they will not play a person who doesn't resign but I will not play a person who asks for resigning.  It annnoys me when someone saids the game is over. resign!!

no problem - i find any reasonable play acceptable and enjoyable - whether we/they resign or play on at the same pace

to likesforests > wish you success in the world open 2008 tournament, please give us some feedback once you've finished ( or even during ) the tournament

Since you're a National Master, I obviously owe your knowledge of the game some respect.  Let me suggest this to broaden the meaning of your statement:  A good player who can clearly comprehend the direction of the game towards his defeat has nothing further to gain from the game, and therefore resigns.  A junior player has ample amount to learn from losing a game and continues to play.

With my 1350 rating, I sometimes continue playing games against higher rated players because I'm learning even in defeat.  Frankly, when I begin a game against a 1500+ rated player I already know I'm going to lose.  If I'm to resign as soon as I lose my queen, then I shouldn't have bothered starting to play the game in the first place.  And I do resign, once I can clearly see the direct path towards my defeat.  But I don't resign immediately upon falling into disadvantage.

With a 1350 rating, I'm obviously not terribly good.  But I can still butcher someone with a 1000 rating.  And when they're refusing to resign, the game can still be fun for me too, because I can challenge myself.  I can try some tactic that I'm not thoroughly comfortable with and see if I still win.  I can challenge myself to mate my weaker opponent in an aggressive number of moves.  Even though the win may be a foregone conclusion, there's plenty of other ways to enjoy the game!

There are venues for higher-rated players where chess becomes more business than game.  But chess.com clearly isn't one of those.  Enjoy the game!

myuselessid, you might not like it, but Reb's right (although he could have been a little more polite...). For people who actually know how to play, there are few things more annoying than being forced to waste time finishing off an opponent who is either too stubborn or too stupid to resign. The only reason NOT to resign is that you're too dumb to see that you're lost, and in most cases that's pretty unlikely. I don't accept "wanting to learn something" as an excuse in these circumstances, because if the position is that hopelessly lost then both combatants are simply playing through inertia. There's no further intelligence required, and thus nothing that can be learned from the experience. Any decent player will know that there's a time to resign and a time to move on, and they will be able to distinguish between the two.

and wagrro, it's much easier said than done to quickly finish off a won position. so many idiots on this site will simply stop making moves when they're lost; they want to keep playing for some reason, but they try to make it as annoying as possible for their opponent. if people would just make moves in a timely fashion and not be jackasses about it, it would be much less frustrating to play someone who refuses to resign.

They hope against hope when their opponent has a superior amount of material or a superior man in power vs theirs that they'll somehow or someway escape checkmate by stalemate or a time out this is more often than not nonsense sometimes fighting on when your opponent has a superior man is justified like let's say you have two Bishops and a King vs an opponent who has a mighty Queen and King his Queen wins if your Bishops are on opposite sides of the Chess Board but in many instances if you know the proper technique you can actually force a draw by assuming a formation with your Bishops like Black has in the diagram in front of your King preventing the other guys King from approaching yours without the King his Queen can't mate!