CHESS ETIQUETTE: Playing On In Ridiculous Positions, etc,

I have a general guideline for playing on in "ridiculous" positions (as you call them)

You should resign when:
1: You find the win for your opponent, and

2: You have complete confidence in your opponent finding a win.

Example: I've got a bare King against a 1500, who has a Bishop and Knight. Despite my ability to win for his side, I will ask him to demonstrate his technique.

Example 2: I'm a Rook down against a 2000, with little to no active play. Resignation.

Example 3: I'm a Rook down against a 2000, but I have a trap hidden in the next few moves that, if he falls for it, gets me back in the game. I will wait until he avoids the trap to resign.

In short times controls, the rants about people keeping playing unplayable positions is irrelevant imho, as long as the player doesn't cheat (!!!) and keep doing something (stalling-depleting your clock to zero without actually doing something- is actual abuse and on a personal note you end up immediately on my ban list if you do this to me), pretty much everything is ok. 

You MUST work on your killing technique instead of begging the other person to give you the victory away.

On longer controls I don't know (It has never happened to me, it is never too late for this).

I likely play in much more OTB tourneys than you and with much more kid opponents. Plus, the person who stalemated me was 1950 USCF

 Thanks to NM CI for his thoughtful comments. My central point is the respect you should give your opponent in an OTB competition. You cannot have an OTB game unless your opponent has given up time and money to get to the board to play you. So, why waste his time (and yours) playing out a ridiculous losing position? The several times an opponent has done this to me, I suspect the motivation was punitive, as there were no lessons to be learned from continuing to play, and the opponent was clearly upset to be losing. 

Over the years, I've had many games where I have  wondered why my opponent wanted to play to checkmate, but, although boring, it was no big deal.  It didn't require that much time (anyway, I had to kill time between rounds somehow), and it required little thinking on my part.  So, I don't see any reason to get upset about it.

We're just discussing chess etiquette in this thread. Nobody is upset. 

Not just chess etiquette, all types of etiquette. Some people dont like losing, so they lash out and resort to childish behaviour. Some people do, in fact, get upset.

No, that's ridiculous for several reasons:

1. Players accidentally in EASILY winning positions.

2. Be happy your are winning, so you have to play it out? who cares? I'd be smirking the whole time.

3. People have to eat in tournaments, there are 6 hour games with no breaks sometimes. We are only human

4. This black or white deciding which set to use..etc is nonsense and irrelevant. Focus on what squares you need to move your pieces to, not what color the squares are.

 OK, ES, in your bio you say you love driving fast -- 103 MPH top speed -- and you like studying endgames. I begin by observing that if you speed, the endgame is often an accident and a trip to the hospital or mortuary. So be careful out there on our roadways! If nothing else, think about the extra money your beleaguered parents will have to shell out for insurance if you get popped for speeding violations. 

On to your comments. (1) I assume you meant to include "lose" as the second word in your first statement.  I suggest you reread my first point, in which I was careful to eliminate any positions with winning chances for the weaker side. Perhaps you were "speed thinking", and missed this.  

(2) Smirk if you must, but all players, even the smirking ones, appreciate a break between rounds (or want to go home after the last one), so forcing them to sit there and play out a hopeless position seems to have nothing but a punitive motive on the part of the player who is losing. Why needlessly punish your opponent, since you need him to play a game?

(3) Yes, there is the argument that we are all human, although, after the election of Donald Trump, we can make the argument that, well, maybe not! You do have to eat, but you do NOT have to eat at the board, and, if you do eat at the board, you do NOT have the right to loudly eat, say, a bag of crunchy chips, while rustling the bag for extra effect.  See, USCF Rule 20G. ANNOYING BEHAVIOR PROHIBITED. 

(4) You are quite wrong, as USCF Rule 39A gives Black the right to choose conforming chess equipment for the game, unless the TD has provided equipment. The purpose of this rule is to eliminate any pre-game squabbles over chess equipment that would otherwise waste the time of the TD to resolve. At last year's Chicago Open, for example, two parents had such a dispute. The player with White had set up his equipment 15 minutes before the game. Black arrived in plenty of time before the start of the game, and asked White to pick up his stuff. The parents of the kid players began to argue, and initially the parent of the kid with White refused to move the set. I was sitting next to them, and told them Black gets his choice under the rules, so that "players will not have stupid fights over which chess equipment to use that waste the time of the TD". Dispute resolved!, and, you'll like this, in a SPEEDY fashion. 

My philosophy is that it is perfectly fine to play on in hope of a result, but it is annoying to play on just to prolong defeat. If you think you can get a stalemate, no matter how low the chances, then play on. If you just want to annoy your opponent by stalling, then you should resign.

 I vote with Mr. Heller.

Speeding isnt dangerous.

One of the classic misinformed statements in the recorded history of driving cars: "Speeding isn't dangerous." Maybe you should do a little research on your claim. See what law enforcement agencies have to say about speeding. Even if I take you literally --- speeding isn't hitting something --- you are still wrong, since speeding increases the risk of an accident.

Not that it's chess related, but I was approached several years ago by local law enforcement and asked if they could use our property for training. Mostly canine training, searching for drugs and guns. But also FLIR work. And in the course of many conversations about what cops do, writing speeding tickets did eventually come up. As a result of those conversations both I, and the police, are in agreement with Endgame on this one. Speeding, by itself, is not dangerous.

No, speed limits are a scam. No one goes as slow as 55 mph on a state highway. Besides going over 110 mph in a 55 zone isn't really speeding...

If someone wants to play on, let them play on, but in the case of over the board, don't be surprised if I play my moves with emphasis, basically to try to get the message across.  Not talking cases where you have a shot at the eternal Rook draw or stalemate, more blatant BS, like I'm Black, you have 2 pawns on a2 and b2, nowhere near promotion, and I have an extra Bishop and 3 extra pawns!

As for the other stuff, there are kids at the club I play at that do some really serious BS and one of them, a highschool senior, does the BS intentionally.  He is rated over 2200, but he only knows how to play quick time controls with intentional distractions, like lining up captured pieces in the peripheral view of his opponent rather than taking captured pieces and putting them to the side like normal human beings.  He banks on running you out of time via distractions and basically sux at chess otherwise!

Literally, any time he uses the rest room, I take his captured pieces and put them out of his reach, like in my own bag if I'm black and using my set, and if not mine, just somewhere where he can't continue to line them up right behind the 8th or 1st rank.  It's like standing 180 degrees from someone in relation to the pin or the hole when another golfer is trying to putt.  You don't stand straight across from him.  It's called ettiquette, something the 16 or 17 year old clown in the same local area as me has absolutely no clue about!

Hey, we get it. Your rating is 1696.

But it took a month and some ...

Really? And what is your rating?