When Should a Beginning Player Resign a Game?

I'd like opinions on this please. As a beginner with a very, very low rating, I lose a lot of material in games. Sometimes it's embarrassing to have my king and a few pawns being chased mercilessly around the board. Sometimes, in frustration, I do resign -- I'm playing mostly Rapid games in the arena now -- but I've read that new players can learn more by playing a game out to the bitter end.

More than once, I've been down and have been tempted to hit the "resign" button, but instead I've held on and have managed to come away with a draw. 

So, I'd like opinions on this, please. It seems more courteous to resign and move on, but at what point should I do that? 

The same. Kasy Saturday I had 891 rating on rapid games. Now I have 787. I cannot reach 1000. I have been learning chess since December 2021. Rating 800 I have since March.

Sorry. Last Saturday. Missclick.

Yes and no...if you play anyone under 850 they make so many blunder that even if you lose your queen you have a chance to win if you play solid the rest of the game.....but above that rating usually they do not blunder every 12 moves...

And it's more in 15+10 games because at a faster rate you will probably not play solid anyway after your blunder...because you need to think very carefully on each of all the moves to play at your very best.

I disagree.

When there is no chance of winning or drawing. If you think that your opponent has an overwhelming advantage and you can't see any way you can turn it around, then it's time to resign.

. Respect is also given with resignation to a strong player, and you’ll rarely find the best players in checkmate before resigning.

At my experience level, I don't really "see" possibilities for drawing a game or ending up with a stalemate. But... sometime when I keep playing, it actually happens.  

Often a lot of beginners with fewer experiences don’t know how they can end the game. So they keep playing till the very last move, fighting for a lost cause and putting themselves in an embarrassing position.

 

I have a bad habit of resigning when i make a huge mistake or blunder like throwing away my queen.

I think its a good idea to keep playing until you are absolutely certain there is no chance of you winning or drawing.

It can be a good skill to learn how to play when you are losing and under pressure

The trouble with slowly understand chess is realising your in a losing exchange or losing position and presuming your opponent realises too. The odd game I can see how I can be taken apart but the opponent doesn't, then you can win. It's happened twice today.

Not really.  It's about opportunity cost.  If you play on in a hundred games for say 10 more moves on average, and you pull out one or two extra wins, you are robbing yourself of about 20 games of chess where you actually have a chance of learning something significant *and* you would have closer to 50% wins to boot.

Do you play on when you have lost an obvious pawn race and it will be K+Q vs. K?  That's just a waste of both player's time once you are confident that (a) you already know the best way to prolong the game, and (b) your opponent has amply demonstrated that they know how to win efficiently with K+Q.

Beginners should play on more often, but the idea that it's always "good" to play until mate is on the board is not the best advice.

The answer is different depending on the rating level.  At your rating level, I wouldn't resign, pretty much ever.

I'm often annoyed by players who continue playing when they've obviously lost (especially when playing in 'daily' mode).

So I would venture to say it's respectful to give up when it's obvious. 

But you draw the line where and when you want to practice and when you want to be respectful.

There is an interesting plot in the research paper for MAIA, a neural network chess engine designed to play like a human player  (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.01855.pdf).  The plot gives a mapping from engine evaluation to probability of winning, given two players of a specified rating.

 

As a beginner, you can probably equate materiel difference and engine evaluation.  That is, if you're down a bishop or a knight, the evaluation is -3.  If you're down a rook: -5.  If you're down a queen: -9.  Something like that.

 

If you look at the plot, you'll see that between two 1000-rated players, a person who is down a queen (-9) still has about a 20-25% chance of winning.  In a game between two players rated much less than 1000, the chance of coming back to win would be even higher.

 

For me, those odds are not so dire that I would rather resign than spend, say, 10 more minutes playing the game.

 

Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a respected  chess coach and chess YouTuber who helps beginners out.  My website is www.ChessByLauren.com

  Never resign!  Your opponent may make a silly mistake that could enable you get back into the game.  

    

Sure if I'm down 15 points material but keep playing for 10 minutes there is a tiny chance my opponent makes huge blunders in a row and I still win. But we beginners are playing to improve and learn, not to climb the ladder per se. I am sometimes tilted if I my opponent want to waste 10 minutes of my time playing a lost game. But sometimes I can also see the value of keep playing, if I happen to have a position I want to practice even when down big. Praying for mistakes so you get a draw or sneaky win is pretty pointless for beginners though, imo. You might get more rating per game, but you might also play more meaningless sessions, play fewer games, grow slower as a player and climb slower too.

Resignation is for wimps, if your opponent can’t beat you in the 50 move rule then that’s their problem. Every game, good or bad, is a learning tool.

Never ever resign

When you're a very low-rated beginner, keep playing until the bitter end. I once had a student on my chess team play his opponent to an ending where my guy had a queen against his lone king. Lo and behold, my guy didn't know how to mate with a queen and king. So, after watching him muddle around aimlessly for a dozen moves, I declared it a draw. And, of course, the same could happen to you. 

As you get experience, though, you will be able to gauge the strength of your opponent and will just know when he's strong enough to convert the advantage to a win. In those cases, it's respectful to resign. Wait until you're about 1000-1200, though. At that level, a player with a big advantage is almost certain to win--unless seriously pressed for time.

 

I agree with you

If your goal is to win at all costs, then keep playing … people blunder all the time and you can steal a win or draw from a lost position against another low-rated player. But if there are no real stakes on the line (such as prize money), then all you are doing is playing “hope” chess, hoping your opponent will play a move that is even more blunderific than the move(s) you made that led to your objectively lost position.

If your goal is to learn from your games, then resign after your first mistake that results in a large material deficit (say, 2 pawns). That way, you will have a nice shorter game with a concrete mistake that you can learn from, and will be able to more energetically explore the earlier moves you made that may have either led you down the wrong path or uncover non-tactical weaknesses in your chess thinking that are prevalent in your move selection.