I've been through games were I had a huge disadvantage (lost my queen, lost a lot of material) and even so won, and I surely thought about resigned. But there are people that say they shouldn't resign whatever the position is, even if the opponent has 9 queens and you have only your king.
What do you think about this?
Main argument for this philosophy: Every opponent can make a mistake, and so you can drive them into a stalemate, or, depending on the position, turning the game to your victory
Main arguments against this philosophy: It's disrespectful to your opponent, since you think they are just stupid and won't be able to win, also you are wasting their time.
I think it's a good philosophy for a beginner, as the beginners' games are full of one-move blunders reverting the result. You can learn how to create various threats even in losing positions, and when your opponent is keeping to the same philosophy, you learn to convert well. But as for your level at the reasonable time control I don't think this applies. When you're playing the position a lot of material down, you can actually hope to win or draw the opponent due to some reasons of low probability 1) Stalemate 2) Misclick 3) Connection issues 4) IRL issues, and maybe you can imagine something else. But this is definitely neither fun, nor instructive, but is in most cases indeed just wasting time for both of you. So it's just weird to play this only to eventually get a probable satisfaction for the win that wasn't deserved or microscopic rating gain if you do this all the time. And even when the stakes are as high as on World Championship Match, people are still resigning.
Well, you could argue that when you're playing against GMs, you know that they won't make stupid mistakes and give up their advantage, even if they are playing blitz/bullet, so there's really no reason to keep playing.
But when you are playing against a random person in lichess, you just don't know who that person is.
Look at one of my games. I was playing against a player 1900 rating. I made some very stupid mistakes and decided to take a big bet by making a complete suicidal nonsense attack by sacrificing some pieces, hoping for a draw with a perpetual check, and I ended up winning the game (I even missed a mate in one near the ending)
Everyone is entitled to celebrate his humiliation. Good players save energy though.
"even if the opponent has 9 queens and you have only your king. "
ESPECIALLY if the opponent has 9 queens you should not resign, because that is when he is most likely to blunder into a stalemate.
I'm a non-resigner by nature, but without expressing an opinion on the general issue, I can say there are some ridiculous resigners out there: sissies who resign a bullet game after losing a central pawn! Certainly below the 2000 level you should not resign when down only a piece, even a rook, and sometimes even a queen, if you have any chance of launching a counter-attack. I once blundered early in a game and allowed my opponent to promote to a second queen with no compensation. Guess what? He lost! It turns out that it is hard to keep two queens safe with lots of minorbpieces and pawns roaming the board. An avalanche if pins and forks, and he was eventually whittled down to one queen versus two rooks and a bishop, and he lost the endgame. As for blitz and bullet, one should just about never resign, except one move before mate (to deny him the pleasure).
It is neither brave nor diffucult to waste your opponents time.
@nayf against people who do this I promote all my pawns to knights before checkmating them. It's a win-win situation - I get to have a bit of fun and my opponent gets the moral satisfaction of saying they didn't resign. And they can't claim it's disrespectful, as it's bad etiquette not to resign in dead lost positions anyway.
@Morozov Exactly. People who won't resign out of spite are more immature than many children and double as obnoxious. Encountering them on a regular basis seriously spoils your fun of the game, because they certainly don't have it.
@spieldeslebens I wouldn't use such strong terms, but yes not resigning does show a lack of passion for the game of chess - it's kind of like you're playing just to show superiority over your opponent rather than chess for the sake of chess. I would happily resign in a position in which I'm a pawn down and my opponent doesn't have an immediate win, since there is no benefit from winning such games, which I didn't deserve to win in the first place.
@soni777new If you would resign when down a pawn in the opening or middle game, it is you who lacks a passion for chess.
@Morozov @spieldeslebens Etc.
I'm not talking about not resigning out of spite. Can you read? I said "if you have any chance of launching a counterattack" and I added or if it's a speed game where you can still win on time by clever play. In short, you should not resign when you still have a decent chance to win (of which I provided a vivid example). That is indeed a passion for chess, which is a competitive sport par excellence. Spite has nothing to do with it. Where I said you should resign only at the end befire mate, I was talking specifically of bullet or blitz, which are by design speed competition and whete tgere is almost always a chance to win when down a piece.
