Feels to me like the best rule to live by is to always accept takebacks, but never ask for them.
Accept takebacks because:
- Winning if the opponent makes an obvious blunder, either accidentally or intentionally, won't do much to improve your chess, it's just taking advantage of luck. You should always aim to play against the best version of your opponent's ideas.
Don't ask for takebacks because:
- As DoomedBishop mentions, you will learn more from your mistakes. Even misclicks can make a game more challenging, and help teach you to recover from genuine blunders.
The rating system is designed so that any single game doesn't have much of an impact, so any disadvantage you get from being too generous with takebacks should even out pretty quickly over time.
There are exceptions:
- If I'm playing a tournament I won't accept a takeback.
- If I'm playing on Blitz or faster time controls I won't accept a takeback, because I often struggle with time and processing the takeback and re-evaluating the position is too time-consuming.
- Sometimes I'll ask for a takeback if I misclick, but I mostly don't expect the other player will accept it anyway. If it's a terrible move and the game is lost then I'll just resign and move on.
Accept takebacks because:
- Winning if the opponent makes an obvious blunder, either accidentally or intentionally, won't do much to improve your chess, it's just taking advantage of luck. You should always aim to play against the best version of your opponent's ideas.
Don't ask for takebacks because:
- As DoomedBishop mentions, you will learn more from your mistakes. Even misclicks can make a game more challenging, and help teach you to recover from genuine blunders.
The rating system is designed so that any single game doesn't have much of an impact, so any disadvantage you get from being too generous with takebacks should even out pretty quickly over time.
There are exceptions:
- If I'm playing a tournament I won't accept a takeback.
- If I'm playing on Blitz or faster time controls I won't accept a takeback, because I often struggle with time and processing the takeback and re-evaluating the position is too time-consuming.
- Sometimes I'll ask for a takeback if I misclick, but I mostly don't expect the other player will accept it anyway. If it's a terrible move and the game is lost then I'll just resign and move on.