When do you resign?
Submitted by
on Fri, 02/20/2009 at 8:59pm.
On chess.com there's a lot of confusion among less experienced players about whether it's OK to resign, or whether they need to play the game out to the bitter end. Perish the thought! It's the Internet equivalent of wearing a hair shirt.
So, when is a position resignable?
For instance, would you resign one game when you were two pawns down but fight on without your queen in another? Is there a time you would continue to play even though mate was unavoidable? In the past ten days I've been in all three situations.
There was a touch of irony about the first two because the critical positions were reached on the same day and within a few minutes of each other. Both games were played against hypertroll.
In the first game he realised that with only the kings and pawns on the board, and with virtually no opportunity to stalemate, even Vishy Anand would have been forced to concede. (Of course, Vishy wouldn't have been in this position in the first place, but that's academic.)
In our other game I had played defensively and had a very cramped position when I saw a chance and forked black's diagonally placed rooks. Winning the exchange wasn't going to help much and I didn't immediately rush to capture one—they weren't going anywhere just for the moment—and on move 42 pinned his queen. So did hypertroll throw up his hands in despair and resign? Not a chance! The difference between this game and the last was that there was still a lot of play left in the position, and black's central pawn chain held more poison that Lucrezia Borgia ever dreamed of. I won't say that Vishy couldn't have won with my pieces in this position but it was beyond me. It wasn't much of a game—at least on my part—but if you want to see how hypertroll won, you can play through it HERE.
If these two positions are typical (well, they're typical of my games, anyway) I conclude that whether or not it's appropriate to resign depends not so much on material advantage, but on the balance of forces in the position. I'll play on as long as there is even a whiff of counter-play; otherwise I quit—I was never one for self flagellation.
But there is another situation where I won't resign, even faced with inevitable defeat. If my opponent has a pretty combination or an attractive mate at his disposal I think he should have the opportunity to play it out. It's one of the rewards that keep us smiling at the chess board, even after a couple of bad games.
In the following position I had just captured the e-pawn without even considering my opponent's total domination of the white squares. It was obvious what he was going to do and “Resigns” would have been appropriate, but I knew he'd enjoy the mate, so I played on.
Over the past eighteen months there has been a fair amount of discussion on chess.com about when (or whether) to resign. I even had a query from a very young English player who said, “I don't know what to do. Do you mind if I resign?” In his case, and perhaps in the case of many other players who persevere beyond any reason, it's simply lack of experience. They don't realise that most games between strong players end in resignation (always assuming they're not drawn).
I wrote a little about this in Harakiri or a slow death but this is a slightly different slant on things.
What's your opinion? What are some other times you either would, or wouldn't, resign.
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