What should I do if someone is a bad sport?

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I agree with you about "There should be rules on what behavior is allowed on a site and those adhered to." Let's hope it can be a serious concern of the chess.com managers. However, the use of original ID is vulnerable to cybercrime, thus the site manager should think about a policy that is able to eliminate the irresponsible attitude of the users who are protected by the pseudonym ID. 

You never win a game by resigning

I can't let this one pass by without a response since my parenting has been questioned. Most Parents would be incensed by such an accusation but I'm not most Parents so let's just apply a bit of logic to it.

I'm teaching my daughter to play Chess & part of playing Chess is knowing when to resign. Resignation is not a 1 rule fits all situation. As I mentioned in a previous post Donald Byrne elected not to resign to Bobby Fischer in the “Game of the Century” No-one complained about that. If anything it was a mark of respect to allow a 13 year old to demonstrate his skill to the fullest extent & it has given us a Game that will be replayed for many years to come.

My daughter will learn the appropriate time to resign as she becomes more proficient at the game. At the moment she has moved from opening basics to the middle game & mating patterns. How is she expected to learn if she resigns as soon as she loses a couple of pawns or a minor piece? The same can be said about endgames when she reaches that part, she will need practice & with practice comes good judgment.

To say that I am teaching her to be a bad person is akin to saying if I let her have a glass of wine to celebrate her 16^th birthday she will end up drinking cheap wine by the gallon, injecting heroine & living under a bridge, its not realistic & a bad analogy.

While I'm on the subject of kids & Internet Chess we have a few basic rules in our house. There is no unsupervised Internet access, no personal info is put on profiles or Social Networking sites & Chat is kept disabled at all times. I have been on the Internet since 1993, in the late 90's my wife & I shut down a couple of child porn sites by hacking their IP's & reporting it to Interpol Child abuse. The Child porn people have got too smart for that now but we know what is out there & how dangerous it can be.

So when our daughter is playing live Chess there is always an adult nearby & she knows to ask if she is unsure about anything..... like “Should I resign now or play on”

My personal philosophy on resignation is that I will always resign when the position is clearly lost & my opponent has demonstrated the ability to play out the win. In live Chess I have resigned purely to give my opponent a clear win rather than me losing out on time trying to fight out a lost position. For me that is giving my opponent due respect for his ability.

For beginners the ability for someone to play out a win is almost always in question, how many times have we seen the winner being the one who makes the fewest blunders when 2 beginners face off across the Chess board?

you like that babi

Honestly, I think you both were acting like idiots.

Understand, I don't criticize you for wanting to play on because that is your right whether the time control is a 2 minute bullet match or a 7 day per move correspondence game.

At the same time...if you see your opponent can mate in 2 and you see that your opponent is aware he can mate in 2, then what more could you possibly learn from continuing to play that game? And what more could you possibly gain that is significant enough to warrant the extra time and effort spent?

And as for your opponent, he was acting foolish as well. Your opponent was angry at you because he felt you were wasting time, right? Well if that was the case, then why on earth would he willing to waste MORE time by refusing to execute his 2 move checkmate? Why would he get angry at you for extending the game (or in your case: beating a dead horse), and then respond by extending the game even more than you ever could?

If that game of yours was a contest in spite or stupidity, then I think your opponent would have won (barely).

But I think if you're going to continue to do strange things like play on in an unwinnable mate in 2 situation under typical correspondence chess time controls, then you better develop some really thick and tough skin. Sure you definitely have the right the play on in that situation, but I can assure you the opponent you spoke of would not be the last person you'll piss off during a chess game.

Let me pose a question on when to resign.

Here is a game I played a few weeks ago

1/- e4, c5

2/- Qh5, d6

3/- Bc4, g6

4/- Qe5 White resigns before I could respond.

So was this resignation justified?

I don't mind just disabling chat on games that are not with friends.

Just behave well yourself and you will be ok.

to be fair, he doesn't have even 10 games in the site. anyway, this thread is being highly entertaining, people arguing about subjectivities, and now the subject of personal IDs somehow crept in~ hihihi

people have the right to play whatever legal moves they want to, in whatever remaining time they have left. whether they are going to get disapproving looks for that is another matter, and usually one of common sense, though it can heavily vary from person to person...

This entire situation is stupid because no one has even mentioned the conditional moves option. If it was really a mate in 2 like the op said then the winning party should have just plugged in conditional moves and been done with it. And it's not like the losing party went "on vacation" in the cc game-that is a frustrating thing, he just wanted  to play the game of chess to the end for whatever misguided reason. But the bigger of the idiots is the one that didnt seal the deal.

Well, of course the resignation is (to use your word) "justified". If people (as LoveYouSoMuch said) "have the right to play whatever legal moves they want to, in whatever remaining time they have left," then they also have the right to resign whenever they so choose.

I think the real question you're trying to pose is whether or not your opponent resigned too soon. The answer to that question imho is "very very unlikely".

I mean I don't see the point in continuing such a game UNLESS some special circumstance is present such as he being an absolute beginner, you being an absolute beginner, you only having 30 seconds left to win the game, you being on the verge of cardiac arrest, him spotting you a queen because he's a GM, etc.

Of course all of this is subjective, but I wouldn't be surprised if the view I described would be the general opinion about that particular case.

Now let me pose this question: What is a better use of time? Waiting to see if you'll return the blunder? Or assuming you'll play the best move and thus deciding to moving on to analysis, study, or playing another game?

@Basilman

You are correct of course. All things being equal White should resign after what must have been a blunder. I assume he intended to play Qd5 lining up on Blacks f7 pawn. But we are not computers & that's the good thing about Chess no matter how many books we read & how much we analyze an opening the human element still comes into play.

So what really happened? Well after Whites elegant attempt at a Queen sacrifice black declines to accept it & plays 5/- ....., Bg7!! offering a stunning counter sacrifice of a Bishop, Rook & a couple of pawns. At this point black would have resigned.

Ok, so this is starting to look like a bad TV game of Chess. I was slightly distracted by a shout of “Fire!” from our kitchen & without really looking at the board I played Bg7 to kick the Queen & ran for the fire extinguisher. When I returned my move had not been accepted & White had resigned. There must have been a couple of seconds lag in the system & Whites resignation went through before my brilliant Bg7 move made it to the server. So if White had waited 1 move to see my response he would have won the game. Does it really matter? No it just demonstrates that almost anything can happen in Chess & if you play long enough you will see some weird stuff.

The game looks like a couple of kids who have just learned the moves & if it was I would have told them to play it out & learn to think about consequences before moving. For me it was just one of those weird things that happen from time to time. So as you asked, Whats the best use of time here? For you or I its a rematch or move onto the next opponent, for 2 absolute beginners its play it out & learn from it.

The longer I stay on this thread the more I am convinced that we can never come up with a single rule for resignation ettiquette. Just respect your opponent & the Game. If your opponent refuses to resign in a hopeless position that's not a reason to abuse him. Just play it to Mate as quickly as you can. Try for a spectacular sacrifice & a smothered Mate if you like or just use it to sharpen up your Blitz game by moving quickly. Even for people who are getting out of the beginner phase they have to learn to finish a game, so there is another group who may benefit from playing it out rather than have their opponent resign.

Good post by queentakesknight.

You're right. No "resignation ettiquette" everyone agrees on exists because ettiquette (especially "chess ettiquette") is largely subjective. At the same time, I'm not naiive to the fact that many players would be angry at me if I decided to play on in a hopeless correspondance game.

However I agree with you, I don't think refusing to resign in a hopeless position with a 5 days per time control is a reason to abuse someone. What I usually do against someone like that is program a forced mate with the conditional move function, and then I type out the sequence in the chat for my opponent to read. Whatever my opponent chooses to do next is his (or her) problem from that point forward.  

Another one from the archives of my previous chess life.

How would you handle this situation? My old Chess club in a town of 25,000 in Australia was always struggling to get more players. A new guy turns up & the club Secretary greets him & has a chat. He then introduces him to me & asks if I'm free to give him a game. So we choose pawns & he gets white. We sit down at the board & he plays both the a & h pawns simultaneously 1 square. 1/- a3 h3

So I'm staring at the board wondering if someone had spiked my coffee & trying to work out how to write it on the scoresheet. I don't think thats a legal move I offered. He said Oh yes it is, its played everywhere in Europe. Hmmm, new player, illegal move!! So I ask the Secretary if he has ever seen the move. He grabs the rule book & says its not in the FIDE rules. The new guy insists it is played world wide especially in his home village in Yugoslavia. He was becoming somewhat heated about it & I could see he genuinely believed it to be a legal move & it was going to end in a big argument if we refused to allow it. So keeping in mind that we were a small club desperately in need of more members how do we handle the situation? I'll post what we did after everyone has a chance to comment but it does have some relevancy to this thread as it could have rapidly degenerated into an abusive shouting match.

Also has anyone ever seen that move or know its origin? The explanation behind it was that it could only be played by White & only on the 1^st move, 2 pawns moving 1 square = 1 pawn moving 2 squares!

Chach3794did not move for 30 min. I ask asked him to please move or sign and he ignored my request. I will try to drag a screenshot I took of the end of the game.

johnpizzo12133