Why are chess players quitters?

Why are chess players quitters? This doesn't happen on a regular basis in any other competition. Tennis players don't just quit and walk off the court if they're in a hopeless position. Football teams don't just give up and leave the stadium if they're down five goals and there's only a minute left of injury time. Olympic runners at the back of the pack don't just stop running once the leaders cross the finish line.

On top of not being a quitter even in a hopelessly lost position, I guarantee you that even at the highest levels of chess, if people who resigned had played out their games, there would be unexpected events and comebacks on some rare occassions. Here is a thought experiment. Think of all the games that have been resigned in the history of high-level chess and have the players instead play out each game to conclusion. In this scenario, can you tell me that there's not a single instance where someone who resigned would end up winning?

Chess players should stop being quitters.

This has been asked now and then over the years.

My favorite response pointed out that in other sports your ability to score isn't diminished. In ball sports players aren't taken off the field. Balls aren't taken away. This sort of thing.

In chess, sometimes the pieces literally aren't able to make a threat (through any legal series of moves).

As you get better at chess, the more easily you can see when no reasonable series of moves will ever save you. Some resign too early, but for the most part it's a logical part of the game that saves a lot of time.

Your response ignores the race analogy. If some runners have already crossed the finish line and won the race, but you're way back still running the race, you can't score, you can't make a threat, you can't do anything to affect the outcome. The outcome of the race is actually already officially decided no matter whether the rest of the runners resign or keep going, unlike in chess where it's still not an official outcome no matter how lost the position until the person resigns. So Olympic runners should just stop running and walk out?

The rules allow it, so it's part of the game

The rules allow one to resign in other competitions too. But no one does. So that doesn't answer the question either.

That only makes any sense under the assumption that all potential positions or times in this race still possible hold equal merit. A crazy assumption if I might say so.

In chess, a loss is a loss. In a race, a faster time and a better position would typically not be without importance. A better comparison might be to a chess round robin tournament. Maybe for exmaple, Topalov is getting destroyed in a tournament. He doesn't refuse to play his remaining games when he can no longer win.

Olympians who are retiring after a race still finish the race even if they've already officially lost the race and even if their time has no future affect on anything. They don't just resign and walk out of the stadium.

Oh I'm sorry. Please go on. Tell me about all of these GMs that have dropped out of their last ever tournaments. Go ahead. I'm waiting.

The best answer seems to be it's just what everyone has always done so everyone keeps doing it. And no one ever questions the practice.

Oh, nothing that anybody has said then? You're just incorrectly answering your own OP despite the other posts here? Was that your intention all along?

P.S. People got checkmated all the time in the 1800s. Yes, even after they saw it coming. --- Lets see if this "P.S." is the only part of my post that you respond to. It would be typical from somebody of your character.

In a race your performance is independent of everything else. In chess the position dictates the ways you're able to preform. To make a proper analogy with racing you might say what if their legs were tied. Or to make a proper analogy with chess you might notice that someone giving a simultaneous exhibition (playing many boards at once) wont quit even if they've lost on many of the boards. They're still able to preform well on the boards that remain.

Wow, if that's your best reasoning then I think I fell for a troll post.

It's hard to tell but I don't think that's the case. The give away for me is that his ratio of games to posts is over 100:1. Actually he's played more games of chess on this website alone than I've ever played.

I just want to probe deeply the rationale behind the frequent use of resignation in chess. I think to truly understand it, one needs to thoroughly interrogate all of the given explanations. Even if an answer seems satisfactory, one should still question the answer thoroughly from every possible angle and counter-argument.

Szachmalp... on one hand, chess "games" cannot be compared with tennis "matches".

In tennis, if we are standing at one edge of the court, if the opponent is smashing the ball to the other edge of the court - and when we know that there is no chance of making it, we don't attempt to run all the way across and waste our energy. We conserve our energy for the next round. Many times the purpose of resigning could be practical.

Second, in chess - philosophically speaking, games are lost and not won. If you blunder away a knight or end up in a seriously inferior position, there is absolutely no way to win or draw unless the opponent blunders. Games like tennis are more dynamic. Continuing in a clearly lost position can be considered disrespectful to the opponent. Example, a Rook and King vs lone King.  

Third, even if you are 0-10 in football, the ability to score a goal isn't reduced. Chess, on the other hand, has a snowball effect. If you are in a terrible position due to material or strategic reasons - the game is significantly harder for you than it is for your opponent. At some point of time, the game becomes so hard that even the world champion cannot salvage it from a semi-decent player. 

Fourth, there is no concept of "forced wins" in other games. There is nothing like "Mate in 5 moves".

However, I do agree that one must not resign recklessly. Consider this game:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1141572

This game is from Irvin Chernev's Logical chess move by move. White has some serious chances after 18. Bxf7

Sorry to jump to conclusions.

The explanation seems not to have to do with the game per se. Chess players resign mainly because that's what's culturally expected, and not to do so would face cultural opprobrium.

The culture is reversed in other competitions. To resign a hopelessly lost position would cause the individual or team to lose face. Additionally, in certain competitions there's an economic component. In the World Series, it might make sense for a team that is down 10 runs in the top of the 9th inning and has a number of injuries in its pitching staff to just resign and save its pitchers for the next game. But to do so would cause outrage from fans and could have negative economic repercussions on future ticket sales. Chess players don't face such a culture or such pressures; they instead face the opposite cultural pressure to resign.

That's a key difference probably -- that fans are a big part of the entertaining sports.

Chess players have the pressure to resign... sort of... but even recently I played a guy who played it out all the way to mate. It's a little annoying, but as long as they don't take a long time to move it's fine.

When my opponent has played a very nice sacrificial attack and now there is a mate in 2 or 3 I usually let them play it because it's pretty. Again I don't make them wait though.

Talking about OTB tournament chess here.

I'm curious if the OP has ever had only their King left and was still dancing around the board waiting to be checkmated.  

In boxing, when one boxer knocks the other player down, the fight may be stopped even when the downed boxer gets back up.  The fight is stopped when one side is judged to be defenseless, whether or not that is literally true.

Why is it that you expect the downed chess player to stand around while you keep beating on him?