resigning

i have read alot off players moan that they hate it when people when they do not resign in a loss course,im will go the other way and say i hate it when they do,i like the feeling of a sweet checkmate.i think you should earn your win. and you deserve the right to mate them, does anyone else feel the same as me?

If the game is over then resign.

Mygame5377 wrote:

If the game is over then resign.

im not saying you should never do it  i just say i prefer to checkmate people rather than them give me the win,checkmate gives the sense of achievement off winning

A win is a win i do not care if the win is fast or slow it should not matter if it is check mate or not that is why some people end up losing because they go for the check mate when they can just take a little longer and still win 

The way I see it, your opponent (who resigns) is absolutely certain of his loss and has seen his end. If I know that it's gonna be checkmate for me in say 5 moves, I'd rather resign than wait for my opponent to play out the finishing moves.

When your opponent resigns, he is also admitting that you are the better player in the game. Don't take it in the wrong way :)

WAYNE1984 wrote:

i have read alot off players moan that they hate it when people when they do not resign in a loss course,im will go the other way and say i hate it when they do,i like the feeling of a sweet checkmate.i think you should earn your win. and you deserve the right to mate them, does anyone else feel the same as me?

 yes i do!

i also like the feeling of make a fatal move...

but it never happens

I suggest a drop-down menu or message box to accompany the RESIGN button: "I am resigning because ..." (in 12 words or less):
[ ] I am going to lose.
[ ] You are going to win.
[ ] I hate being checkmated.
[ ] I've got better things to do than play out this game to its inevitable conclusion.
[ ] None of the above.

infinitum wrote:

The way I see it, your opponent (who resigns) is absolutely certain of his loss and has seen his end. If I know that it's gonna be checkmate for me in say 5 moves, I'd rather resign than wait for my opponent to play out the finishing moves.

When your opponent resigns, he is also admitting that you are the better player in the game. Don't take it in the wrong way :)

im not taking it the wrong way,im just saying i prefer to checkmate them :)

Amnesiac wrote:

If I am winning easily and my opponant won't resign then I will instead.

 Do you mind if I challenge you? I could do with a few easy points. All I have to do is start losing badly: how hard can that be?

When an opponent is losing, and will definitely lose unless I make a dubious blunder, I:

1.  Give him the benefit of the doubt that I might make the wrong moves;

2.  Put the game out of my mind until he makes his next move (even after a 14-day format, or a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong vacation); and,

3.  Look for other players to play with.

The stalling is his problem, not mine.

This is starting to become just so much blah, blah, blah.

A new topic, my kingdom for a new topic.

WAYNE1984 wrote:

i have read alot off players moan that they hate it when people when they do not resign in a loss course,im will go the other way and say i hate it when they do,i like the feeling of a sweet checkmate.i think you should earn your win. and you deserve the right to mate them, does anyone else feel the same as me?

Grandmasters certainly don't feel the same as you.  Take a look at any grandmaster games, and tell me how many of them were played to the completion (i.e checkmate)?

The only time I'm bothered if people resign, is if they still had a chance at winning.  Otherwise they are just smart to admit the defeat and move on.

Has anyone looked in the psychology of playing on in the face of a certain defeat? Could it, in some instances, be analagous to the situation in which a rabbit caught in headlights seems unable to flee - or similarly, when a rabbit is 'fascinated' by a weasel ?

in a loss its good to play on and see if you can get the game  back,chess is a battle and would a king in real life battles just except defeat,know they fight til the end in honour and fight til the deaf

RE: "I'd rather play checkmate than have my opponent resignt"

Chess is a game of the mind. There is no difference between finding the checkmate in your mind and playing it on the board. If you have forced your opponent into a position where you can play checkmate and your opponent resigns, it what sense have you not earned your win? In what way have you been given the game? This is like saying "I don't like that the game ends with checkmate, I want to capture the king. Otherwise I have not earned my win, the opponent is just giving it to me once I get them in checkmate."

im not saying ive never resigned early because i have coz of stupid moves but generally i will fight til the end to see if get lucky or find line i try and exploit

WAYNE1984 wrote:

in a loss its good to play on and see if you can get the game  back,chess is a battle and would a king in real life battles just except defeat,know they fight til the end in honour and fight til the deaf

 lol...." fight till you are deaf"...mate I am already deaf !! (that was a good deaf joke I've heard)  ROFL !!

This just reminds me of when I used to play in highschool.  I would almost always beat my peers.  I would tease them by pretty much making the exact same opening attack every single game (can't remember what the line went like but it was a slightly more elusive version of the scholars mate (primitive I know) or something like that... I've never studied openings or names of the obvious) and watch them squirm under the assault.  Once in a few games they would be able to exploit a blunder on my part.  If they were able to fully exploit it and I saw defeat I would resign.  This annoyed them and people watching the game... they felt I was robbing them of something.

This reminds me of an article I read (I believe it was from Batgirl (she is such a gem on this site) or someother great article contributer) that pointed out that back "in the day" not resigning was unsportsmanlike and beneath the top players of the game... resigning afterall "robs" your opponent of the checkmate they deserve.

"This is like saying "I don't like that the game ends with checkmate, I want to capture the king."

As usual, Loomis captures the heart of the matter. Another way to look at it is that we play the play the game for fun. While the game remains a competitive struggle, I think the game is fun for all parties. Once the outcome is no longer in doubt, the game ceases to be fun for advanced players.

For beginners the technique used in achieving the final position of mate can still be fun or educational. By all means, if the game is still fun for you or educational, play on. But you must realize that advanced players may very well decide not to play you again.

Like it or not, there is an etiquette to resigning a lost position. But it works both ways, once you know you are going to lose (and relatively how), the fun of the game is gone and the game should be resigned. But NOBODY should ever resign a game if they do not understand how they are lost. They are robbing themselves of the education of the game if they resign a game because they are simply told they are lost.

This subject has rather been done to death, but just to try and sum up the consensus:

It all depends on the level of the players.

For beginners, playing the game out to its conclusion is frequently the right thing to do. Yes, the player with an advantage may blunder it away.  But perhaps more important, both players have to learn how an advantage is turned into a win. Especially in endgames there are tricks and techniques to learn and practice. And as the original poster said, there IS pleasure in applying the final coup, the checkmate!

For experts, once a game has tilted significantly towards one player it is essentially over. Both players will be able to see clearly how the game can be forced to its conclusion. Playing through all the remaining moves will be merely tiresome. Once the losing player knows that the end is in sight, a resignation saves them both from wasting their time on a dead game. It is both sensible and the polite thing to do.

Experienced players will have won and lost enough games for the thrill of the checkmate to have dulled, but instead likely take more pleasure from the accurate/imaginative play that was required to gain the winning advantage in the first place. The once challenging and exciting process of grinding out a win from a "won" position has become a tiresome formality.

Most of use find ourselves between these two extremes. We have to judge for ourselves when a game is essentially lost. When that point is reached we should resign. It is not polite or acceptable to merely keep playing an impossible position (and known to be impossible by both players) in the hope that the opponent will drop dead from boredom before he/she can finish you off. Winning is not everything. Unless the game is a World Championship Final, both players have more important things to do (including getting onto their next game of Chess) than plod through a meaningless one-sided endgame

On the other hand, if you are winning, don't be too quick to become impatient with an opponent who will not resign. The very fact that you are winning shows they may well be a weaker player than you. They may feel they still have a chance to avoid losing, or they may want to see and learn from how you play out the game.

Personally, I don't like the idea of asking an opponent to resign. If you do feel the need to do this, take care to be polite. Any suggestion of gloating or "demanding" a resignation is likely to be counterproductive in any case. If your stated motive is to "teach" your opponent by spelling out the fatal moves, you might as well play them out on the board and teach them that way.