What is the worst poor sport you have ever seen?

#1, "request" a draw, what does that mean?

Reading between the lines I consider both players guilty". Moving and offering/declining draw, that's the rules. Stick closely to them, that's my recommendation.

Chatting, take-backs and so on lead to forum-whining after all. Play chess, don't communicate by non-official means.

By the way, as far as I can rely on my sources Fischer was the best sportsman over the board. He was the perfect gentleman during the games. To the contrary, all this iditioc stuff and bat-shit insane behaviour was "off the board" say between the games.

There was a player in my area (he's since moved away) that used to teach children's chess clubs and play tournaments himself. When I was around 15 years old I was matched with this player in a small day-long tournament. Held at a seedy Chinese restaurant, there were about ten of us competing who all intimately knew each other.

In the third round I was paired against the player in question. We played a main line Caro-Kann and I sacrificed a pawn on e5 and exchange on d7 very early to generate an initiative. After a long struggle he was left in a hopeless zugzwang in the late middlegame. For the next forty-five minutes he let his clock run down while staring at the board, presumably trying to find an answer in the position. It wasn't too difficult for anyone of his strength (~1700 at the time) to realize that the position was resignable, but nonetheless he looked at the board until flagging.

Needless to say everyone in the tournament was a bit peeved since the next round was delayed for so long. So I told my coach at the time about it, and he said that long ago he'd played the same player in a tournament. That player had been in a hopeless position but waited until the end of the round, when the game was adjourned, without resigning his hopeless position. My coach came to the playing hall the next morning at 7 AM to resume the game, whereupon the player waited out the clock without moving and flagged.

I think about the countless hours of peoples' lives that have been wasted by this one person during the course of his chess career (he must be retired now). As someone who was also known to gloat about his wins, I'd say this is one of the worst sports I've ever come across.

@Sarg0n To request a draw is simply to offer a draw. Offer/Request are almost interchangeable, but not quite. Normally such a thing is not being a bad sport however when you have a clearly inferior position doing so, in my opinion, is insulting. For example if I just won a piece off you, then you offered a draw it is being a bad sport.

Most people say "offer" when referring to a draw, however, when you are in a clearly superior position I don't think an offer is the most accurate term. Frankly, I used "Request" to avoid using the word "Begged" and coming off as uncouth.

Furthermore, according to your logic I have displayed no poor sportsmanship as Fischer was a great sportsman on the board despite his batshit crazy off the board nonsense. I'm not on the board when I'm on the forums.

Also, I shall have Rarity explain the difference between whining and complaining to you.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=csPPqdbcVwM

There was a strong player in my youth team chess team league growing up. Most players from different schools were very friendly with one another, but this particular player seemed to prefer infamy. He had a flair for attempting to humiliate players as much as possible, whether it be over the board or just plain old trash talking.

In one tournament there was a brand new team that had just formed at their high school. We were all happy to have more competitors in the scene, so we welcomed them.

Our player in question, however, did not. Sitting at board one, facing a female player of ~900 strength (he was 1600), he achieved an overwhelming advantage, the systematically sacrificed all of his pieces except his knights, pawns, and king. He promoted all the pawns to knights and seemed to take great pleasure in asking his buddies to get him knights from other boards, or finding them himself while giggling.

But he had made a mistake messing with the wrong person. This girl waited patiently after he promoted his 10th knight on the board and ran down her clock for 15 minutes, staring him down the whole time. It became clear immediately that he was uncomfortable with everyone watching, his attempt at humiliation laid bare. At the end of her time, she resigned.

After the tournament, the TD sent a letter to the coach of the team informing him that the player would no longer be eligible to play in the league unless he wrote an apology letter to the girl and her team for his behavior. He wrote the letter and remained in the league.

Today, he's not the same person. We can all succumb to personality flaws as children, but this incident stood out to me as an extraordinarily unnecessary event.

@dRr0x0rZZ It makes me wonder if GM Finegold is a bad sport when he does things like that. I could argue it either way. I played him in a game once on another site when he was streaming and he wound up winning by bringing me down to just a king then giving away all of his stuff but a knight and bishop using that to mate me.

Arguments for it is bad sportsmanship:

-Kinda humiliating for the person being mated
-Could obviously mate much faster
-He is always trash talking when he does this stuff as well
-Some folks will maybe try to imitate him in this sort of style, monkey see monkey do

Arguments for it is not bad sportsmanship:

-He is a Grandmaster & Chess teacher, it is demonstrating a technique to a class/audience
-It gets more him more views and this is how he makes his money
-To get mated in such a fashion is up to you, you could simply resign at any time or let the flag fall
-The time controls are always quick with him so it's not like he takes forever and it's over pretty quick

@lurarose
If the issue is that he burns all his clock time, seems you don't quite like long time controls. There is blitz to avoid that. And still there is no chess variant where you can force your opponent to play moves you consider strong while forcing him to make them smoothly and fastly without asking draws or takebacks.

On lichess, of course there are those who just run out the clock when in a lost position. Also, people who look for draws in obviously lost positions.

I have turned off the take-back function, and I do get a bit of abuse from people who expect to be able to use it.

Offline, there was a player in our school who was a fairly good winner, but, when losing,would always start to complain about something - the noise, the light, something, anything, and then go on and on about how he couldn't concentrate because of that, and eventually resign, claiming it was because of that.

@kenzaburo

Bullet: Weakest chess, rarely resign lost position
Blitz: Moderate chess, sometimes resign lost position
Rapid / Classical: Strong chess, usually resign lost position

This is a sort of unspoken code. The faster the time controls the less likely someone is to resign thus the more likely you are to be in boring one-sided positions.

I don't mind if an opponent takes time to think. If you want to think a while on key positions and take your time that's just fine. However, if you are clearly losing and we both know how it is going to turn out... move in a reasonable amount of time especially if you are asking for a draw. There is no excuse for making someone wait 5+ minutes in a position where you are down a piece and have nothing.

Just don't make sense to me why the person would do that other than some sort of revenge for me not giving a 20th take back... I mean they resigned the first game when it was reasonable to do so. So I know they know how to resign a lost position... Also they moved expediently at other times in the play so I know they can move in a timely manner when they feel like it.

@lurarose

Since I've seen people doing this time wasting thing and later win the game because the oponent goes on tilt and blunders badly out of nowhere (myself included on both sides), I think it's valid to some extent trying to test your opponent.