Masterful Resignations

At what level of chess mastery does one know immediately when his/her position is hopelessly lost and a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey Ice Cream is in order to soothe the crushing defeat? 

I'd hazzard to guess that it would take a very strong chess player to resign in this most masterful way.

It all depends. If a player doesn't have much respect for their opponent, they might play on in a lost position that still has chances for a mistake from their opponent. However, at whichever level anyone plays, most people will resign when they realise that they have no realistic chance to win or draw the game anymore.

For someone to be able to know immediately and accurately when they are lost in any position, they would have to have solved the game of chess, and therefore most likely, could never lose, since my opinion is that chess is a draw with best play.

So, a person would need the brain power of Rybka to only come close to knowing immediately when it's time to call it quits? Interesting.

I agree. It is also my opinion that chess is a draw with best play.

"One's position cannot be better than it was before!" - Dan Heisman

The evaluation of a position assumes best play.

There were cases when 2700+ players resigned in drawn positions. There is no level that ensures such a mistake won't happen.

My favorite is Starbuck's Java Chip. It's a blend of coffee ice cream and chocolate chips. Yum!

Even better for chocolate lovers is the everything chocolate sundae at Ghiradelli's Chocolate Company in San Francisco.

"There were cases when 2700+ players resigned in drawn positions. There is no level that ensures such a mistake won't happen." - WGM Natalia Pogonina

@ Natalia - Fascinating that a resignation would happen in a drawn position. I would think the players would play on until one of them made a clear mistake to make the decision making process decisive.

Actually, my question was more open ended. Here's another way of looking at the masterful resignation. Have you or your opponent ever resigned when there was material equality - but the opening was so horribly botched that you or your opponent found it hopeless to continue?

The best ice cream I ever had was at Steve's Ice Cream in Somerville, Massachusetts back in the 70's.

Since then my favorite is still Busch Garden's Ice Cream in Williamsburg, Virginia.

I'm getting more sharing of favorite ice creams than responses to a question like: how do you become a master at resignation.

I guess I hijacked my own thread.

Now, I finally was vindicated in my preference for dipping pretzels into ice cream with Ben and Jerry's most outstanding Chubby Hubby!

Paul's Ice Cream in Milwaukee, WI was the best!  Down here in Cincinnati everyone likes Graeter's.

If you are playing someone of equal rating, and neither has made a blunder, I think it needs to be played out until you both are down to two or three pieces.  Then the insufficient material rules come into play.  NvR is a loser, ect.

Never thought of it that way. Perhaps I resigned too early in one cc game after hanging a minor piece which is worth three pawns?

In fact, this happened to Topalov just a couple years ago! I can't recall if he was over 2800 at the time, but if not he was close.

One of my favorite resignations came from Byrne - Fischer in 1963.  For some reason, I don't think the chess.com database has the game, but it can be found on chessgames.com, with some nice annotations.  Fischer was playing black, and Byrne resigned on move 21.  Here is the final position.

Fischer is down a piece for only a pawn (he sacrificed a knight earlier in the game), but is completely winning.  What I love about this resignation is that, from the stories at the tournament, Byrne and Fischer may have been the only two people in the room who knew the position was won for black!  There were two grandmasters commenting on the game for the benefit of the spectators, and after move 20, they were explaining to everyone that white had won, and black's position was hopeless.  Then after the quiet move Qd7, Byrne tips over his king! 

Thanks for posting this game. It also makes for a great mate in seven puzzle.

Fritz 12 vs. Fritz 12 with best possible play from both sides.

How long did you let fritz analyse that? 4. Rxd4 postpones mate for one more move than Be7, which is no biggie, but 3. Qd4?? That doesn't make any sense, why would fritz suggest that at all? Are you sure Fritz didn't tell you to do 3. Qf4? At least that move doesn't lead to a forced sequence of moves leading to mate.

Even Rybka doesn't come close. If it did, when evaluating the starting position, it would either say that the position is a draw, a forced win in however many moves (highly unlikely) or a forced loss in however many moves (incredibly unlikely, since it would require white to be in fatal zugzwang from the very first move, but it can't yet be ruled out).

(I thought the name of the thread was to do with things like Alekhine throwing his king across the room or Nimzo shouting at the end of a game "Why must I lose to this idiot !" or Karpov just writing his name on his scoresheet and walking off....:-)   )

There's a problem with my use of the word zugzwang? It's only simple logic that if black, from the beginning, has a won game, then every single one of white's 20 possible moves are worse than doing nothing at all (like I said, an exceedingly remote possibility), since if white *could* do nothing at all, he would be in black's position, and would win. That, to me, seems like the very definition of zugzwang.

Tim Krabbe has a collection of games in which people resigned in winning positions.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/resigntxt.htm

According to Fischer (from the annotations on chessgames.com), this is what he was hoping for.

Well there's the famous Kasparov vs. Deep Blue game that comes to mind. But no one can blame him for that

Yeah I kinda agree with Schubomb, it's sort of about sizing up the competition in relationship to the position. That's probably the reason why higher rated players get frustrated at lower rated players who move slowly and don't resign.

"You're down a Rook and pawn with no attacking chances. Auto-win for me!!"

But lower rated players lose games all the time when they're up a Rook and get mated out of nowhere, so they play on in hopes they can do the same.

I'm sure Rybka could give a lot of players Queen odds and still be relatively confident in a win/draw.