Resignation vs Checkmate!

One of my opponents has found a new way of dealing with his losses.  He lost the first of our two tournament games very quickly then, virtually from move 1, turned our second game into "take chess".  If you're not familiar with that it's a  children's variant in which players try to lose all their pieces.

Now I have to persevere with this child (he's 13 or 14) until I clear enough rubble out of the way to mate him.

Is it getting up my nose?  You betcha!  Can I ignore him and just play my other games?  Definitely -- what other option is there?

I make no apology for mentioning the little boy's name.  You'll need to know it so you can avoid getting caught yourself.  (He's only been a member for a couple of weeks ... I doubt if he'll be around for long.) 

lol Dozy! :s That sucks! (i dont think there is a better expression fer it heh) cheers fer the heads up.

Im in a game where i am a rook and knight and couple of pawns, including a passed pawn, up against a king and a trapped pawn... i set a conditional forced mate (tis a 3 day turn game) and my opponent waits till he has 2 hours left, then makes 1 move...not even responding to my conditional moves! Then waits again.... lol/cry (i wouldnt mind except i need to end all my games before i go on holidayheh)

Poor Dozy, hehe! It happens to everyone from time to time. Like you said, focus on your other games to keep up your spirits. If it makes you feel better, here's one of the games I'm being forced to play out at 2-3 days/move. ;)

 LOL I think we've all had some of those. The worst of mine was a guy who not only used up all his time on each move, as well as all his vacation time, but added insult to injury by quoting scripture at me.  He finally timed out after making only 2 or 3 effective moves in many weeks. 

At least, in your present circs, your conditional moves should over-ride your vacation setting.

 I think it is possible to have your settings so that you won't claim a win on your opponent's time out. I suppose that someone might let the time run out on a hopeless games hoping that his opponent's settings won't claim the win. It's just a possible explanation, but it does not mean the behavior is not really shabby.

It's obviously annoying when people purposely prolong games that are no longer interesting, but I feel that if someone legitimately wants to keep playing he or she should not be pressured to resign just because somebody else thinks it's a lost game. It's a question of learning - if I haven't seen a given "hopeless" situation before, I may want to play it out for a few more moves just to understand exactly why it was worthy of resignation.

I resign if I know I lost a game for sure...

People have their reasons why they resigned a game.

ADK

If you want to resign then do so. Why care what your opponant thinks. The more games you play the higher your learning curve will arch. Thats how I look at it anyway.

Another perfect thread to plug The Chess Spartans:

http://www.chess.com/groups/view/chess-spartans

This group is for those who enjoy the taste of checkmates, and would rather go down fighting than throw in the towel.  You know there's a lot of you out there.  Come fight for Sparta!!  Fight for Honor!!  Fight for Glory!! 

At the very least, everyone should see this picture:

http://www.chess.com/photos/view.html?id=253917

If you are one of the many people who don't like playing against Chess Spartans, and wish they would just resign already, then join The Chess Athenians.  There you will learn all about how the Atheninans made the Spartans surrender.

http://www.chess.com/groups/view/chess-athenians

Billium248 wrote: Another perfect thread to plug the http://www.chess.com/groups/view/chess-spartans vs. the http://www.chess.com/groups/view/chess-athenians

Billium248, Billium248, Billium248

I hope you are considering your course carefully before re-igniting the embers of a smouldering conflict that was fought a long time ago. These battlefields

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/resignation-etiquette2
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/kobayashi-maru-hopeless-situations
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/teaching-people-to-resign-from-a-hopeless-position
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/those-who-refuse-to-resign-when-they-are-completely-lost
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/showing-people-to-resign-in-a-hopeless-game
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/point-score-on-early-resignation
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/another-resignation-issue
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-players/posting-the-obvious

are littered with the corpses of dry, dusty arguments - blowing like leaves. Beware the Balrog!

Just for the record: I've created a group Chess-Athenians which serves no purpose at all. It's stated aims are: Democracy, Rationality, Enlightenment & Tolerance.

Oh, and 'Down with the Chess-Spartans!'

artfizz, artfizz, artfizz

You and I both perfectly know that the number of people who actuly use the search box is like 10% or less.

On another note for somre reason all the text on this page and and all others has gotten bigger and idk how to change font size on firefox... anyone else know? its soo annoying. and the font im writing in is bold =S.. or atleast it seems that way to me

deadpoetic wrote:.On another note for somre reason all the text on this page and and all others has gotten bigger and idk how to change font size on firefox... anyone else know? its soo annoying. and the font im writing in is bold =S.. or atleast it seems that way to me

It looks like: View -> Zoom -> Zoom Out (or In)   or Zoom Text Only

That's what I love about you Art.  You do your homework.  I knew that there were plenty of threads out there like this, but never had them all listed together like that.  Don't worry tho.  I'm not going to go back and post in each of them to build the Spartan vs Atheninan armies.    Actually it looks like it was The Wizard who resurrected this thread.

Here is the end result of a lovely little game I finally got to the end of recently.  Pictured is move 59, where my oppponent finally resigned.  We were on 10 day moves, and he would often take a full 8-10 days per move, especially taking longer once he started losing.  By move 42 I was up materially, and from move 48 on I simply chased him around with my queen, king and pawns - all he managed to do in the last 10 moves was eat one pawn and shuffle his king around aimlessly.  I programmed the final 5 or 6 moves of the game in with conditional moves, and told him in the chat window that I had done so, and wouldn't be paying any attention to this game anymore.  He finally resigned at two moves away from checkmate.

I play the game out . And I think that's how it should be . Do you play just for the win , or for the game ?  I noticed that  high ranked players use that option more then lower ranked players , probably because they  know the outcome  sooner  . However  .not to long ago I won a game against somebody 400 points higher then me , Iam pretty sure that he could have won .  Against me anyways.

I like to play the game out, too.  And I have no problem with long move times, that's why I was willing to start a 10-day-per-move game.  However, the particular way this player conducted himself is what irked me.  He only slowed down dramatically when the game was near the end and he had no way to win (for the last few moves he had a blocked pawn and his king, while I had a queen.  He couldn't win, and none of his moves were consequential.  He couldn't even capture a piece unless I went and hid my queen over in the corner of the board to let him.  If you're taking your time to consider your moves carefully, I think that's entirely appropriate, but when you take longer and longer to make moves that cannot achieve anything, it seems a bit inconsiderate.  So that's why I entered the conditional moves out to checkmate - I would have rather played it out, if he was being more considerate.

If you can't see that your position is hopeless (unlikely) or if you have any doubt at all that your opponent can convert the position into a win, then by all means continue to play. In any other situation, resignation is the appropriate response. I hate being forced to play out an obvious win against someone who is either too stupid or too stubborn to resign. In a position where both players can see the win, it is petulant, immature, disrespectful, and indicative of bad sportsmanship to force one's opponent to continue playing. The conditional moves don't help in most of these situations because most of the moves aren't forced. Even this wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so many dumbasses on this site who waste as much time as possible with their moves in order to annoy the hell out of their opponent (that's the only explanation I can conceive of).

If you have a large enough advantage to win,then force the win as quickly as possible, otherwise respect that your opponent wants to see how games are won.

2nd reason to keep playing a losing game, is to strengthen ones skill in defensive movements and finding the rare and elusive stalemate.

What did I just say?? If someone is actually making moves in a timely fashion, than your brilliant strategy of finishing games quickly would work. If they're one of those people who purposely slow to a crawl when losing, then there's nothing to be done except remember not to play them again.