When is the right time to resign?

Speaking of grand masters, I've often heard Magnus Carlsen describe how you should worry about your own play and have faith in that rather than relying on your opponent to make a mistake. Two wrongs doesn't make a right, so I consider it a hollow victory to continue after your mistakes and thus effectively ignoring that you indeed made one. This is why I argue that wasting time like that just to win an unfair victory is counter constructive.

Mpaetz mentioned that people often blunder in complicated positions even when they have the lead. I don't. I just get so extremely bored and unmotivated that I'd rather lose just to get it over with and start just making careless moves. It sucks the joy right out of the game. Similar to how Justbefair mentioned when people start idling in 30 minutes games and suddenly start playing when there is 1 minute left on the clock hoping the opponent has left. This has nothing to do with chess. Idling / stalling / quitting is against the fair play rules for that reason.

I believe that you are seriously misinterpreting what Magnus said. That sentence doesn't have the meaning that you think it has. He is talking against unsound tricks and "hope chess" and not against fighting in bad positions.

Everyone makes mistakes. The person who makes the second-to-last mistake wins.

I heard somewhere that it's not good to resign even when things aren't looking good because there's always a chance there could also be a stalemate or draw or something which will be at least a little points

It depends mostly on what your focus is.

If your main goal is to have fun and you don't give a hoot about your rating points... then resign when you feel that you are no longer having fun. Start a new game. Have fun.

If your goal is to improve your playing strength (NOTE: not just "to increase your rating points", but to improve your actual ability at playing the game) then you should resign when you feel that playing on in this lost position won't teach you anything. Basically, once you can clearly see how the opponent can force a win, you've learned about all that game can teach you.

If your goal is to pump up that meaningless little number called a rating, then you should resign when you feel that the time you are spending trying to save this lost game (and the rating points it represents) would be time better spent on a new game, earning back the lost points instead of trying desperately (and failing) to cling to them.

So if the ratings are so worthless, why do we have them?

I gues you should dont give up

So that the forum software can make reasonable pairings.

They are "worthless" in the sense that far too many people attach far too much importance to the little number. The important thing is how well you play.

You lost a hundred rating points? That means that you'll get easier pairings for a while until you recover those lost points. If you never do recover the points, then you didn't DESERVE them in the first place (in the sense that your previous high rating was not based on your actual playing ability, or lack of it).

makes sense ig, but to me its more of a self confidence thing. If I see that I got a higher number than I did before I'm like "oh cool so im doing good. That's good." but if I'm losing points its like "well...shi-"

I used to teach chess, at a few chess clubs.

One thing I noticed was that when a student got interested in some new chess concepts (especially strategic rather than tactical concepts) their playing results and rating would go DOWN instead of UP. It would only be later, perhaps a few weeks later, after they had assimilated the new info and successfully incorporated it into their style, that their rating would go back up... to a new level, higher than before.

well I don't have a coach or anyone to teach me to play, so i don't entirely understand the process of learning.

Nobody does.

Every person has their own individual style of learning.

We can identify "learning channels"... watching a Youtube video (visual), listening to a lecture (audio), following along by making mves on your own board (kinesthetic feedback), question-and-answer (the Socratic method)... but each person finds their own balance between the available channels of learning.

I also noticed that at first I had trouble even staying in the 200s but now I'm halfway to the 300s, so that's gotta say something, right?

im 200 even ):

Sure.

My opinion: The number one key to improving is objective self-criticism. Look over your lost games. It's unpleasant... we'd all rather just forget our losses, not study them... but if you can understand WHY you lost a specific game, that's a big step toward eliminating that particular error from your play.

And I don't just mean "I lost because I blundered my Queen away"... go one step further and ask yourself WHY you blundered your Queen. Did you run out of time and blunder, because you were unfamiliar with that opening? Learn at least ONE line in that opening. Were you just feeling uncomfortable in that type of position, and couldn't think of anything, so you reached out and made a random move? Learn a few tips on how to handle that type of position.

There are a lot of trolls and brats on the forum, but there are also many helpful and knowledgeable people.

well in the game I'm currently playing, I tried to do that thing where I instantly move my queen to the middle right side, kill the pawn in the middle checking the king, then go for the rook on the other side, but I moved to a spot where I accidentally got it killed by the other queen cus i wasn't paying attention

when you know you're for sure are going to lose and only play for luck and even if you win, you would still feel that you lost

No right time

If you never blunder how can you maintain such low ratings?