The art of resigning

Resignation has played its role in various games and eras throughout mankind's history. In wars people resign when defeat is imminent so as to prevent further loses. In chess, the two warriors on opposing positions of the board offer the same courtesy.

But the the art of resigning has evolved just as our society (and our chess) has evolved. It was a common trend at one point for a player to announce "Mate in 5!" and the game would be over.

At other periods it was the trend to tip the king at the first sign of trouble. Bystanders of the grandmasters would often wonder what had happened.

In other times, it was popular to resign simply to save face. To NOT resign was to be incompetant, as if you DIDN'T realize you were being defeated.

It has been the fashion to give up to prevent your opponent from having the satisfaction of declaring "Checkmate!"

But now I must ask all readers this simple question; if you know that your game is lost, why do you waste your own time and your opponents by playing a lost position? If you don't understand the value of the resignation, I suggest you learn it.

So below is a puzzle! If you give up, press the "solution" button.

Please check the other 1,000,000,000,000 posts about belated resignings, and you will have the answer to the eternal question. BTW, there is NO answer, people are still completely random, and will resign or not resign based on their own individual feelings, which may change even for the individual. A better answer to seek is why so many people feel compelled to question human reasoning behind not resigning or any other human action.

I will admit, I resign when all seems lost to me. On the other hand, I don't think it is a waste of time to play it out.

Buckling down and playing tough chess from a lost position can be helpful for the person. Also, a player with a superior position occasionally plays poorly when in the lead and can fall back to equality.

It would be nice if folks didn't try to suck the life out of every game though, resigning is nice. Shows respect and a desire to try again in my opinion.

thesexyknight, people play on because there's always (or often) a chance that your opponent will blunder and you'll make a comeback. In your puzzle, obviously White's best option is to resign—Black could sac all his queens and still win. But in many positions, you still have a fighting chance.

But what if black accidentally started to move his king, then because of touch move rule he'd end up drawing you.  Play on!

But most of those forums are about why NOT to resign or people being annoyed that people won't play out a position. I"m just trying to explain why resigning is important. That makes me original

No you're not, dozens of people have already expounded their opinions on the importance of resignation in the attempt to support the idea that people should resign in lost positions. I agree with them totally, but so far the arguments have failed to convince many others.

*goes back to hiding far, far away from these threads*

I suppose that's correct. This type of post is incredibly redundant. I hereby declare this forum CLOSED!!!!!!

I'm not deleting it... I"m just trying to make people stop posting in it .

Why? I know you feel contemptuous towards this entire thread

Love your puzzle!

Have any new attitudes come along that I missed?

Your chart is far more in depth than I would have gone . So probably not....

I'm pretty sure those words, sardonic and contemptuous, are pretty much the same thing....

One can be sardonic without being contemptuous. In any event, the issue is that any fool on the street can act contemptuously, but it takes real wit to be sardonic. Whether tonydal meets that criterion I leave to the gentle reader to decide.

I looked the words up on dictionary.com. They are about the same thing.

The words are not the same. Even "about the same thing" allows for significant differences in nuance and tone.

"Yell" and "Scream" are about the same thing; but while the first encompasses pretty much any raised-voice noise, the second tends to imply something extra such as anger or fear.

"This thread sucks" = contemptuous
"This thread makes me yearn for the days of rotary telephones" = sardonic

You know what? you are right! I RESIGN

I am surely at a disadvantage here against you people who doesn't stop talking about resigning without reading the other 10,000,000 posts already in the forum

We aren't talking about resigning anymore. Now we're talking about word choice and nuances :D

resigning is a resignation did you know that