Thursday 18 August 2011

Is it wrong to resign?

A strange story reached my ears the other day. In a schools event, a player realised he was about to be checkmated and resigned (a rarity at that level!). This apparently did not please a teacher watching the game, who took the resigning player to task, claiming that "he had denied his opponent the honour of winning by checkmate".
Certainly the teacher involved was clearly not a chess player (in the 'played in chess tournaments' sense), as chess players understand that resigning is a perfectly valid way of ending the game, and it is often not resigning which shows a lack of respect. And to the players credit, he thought the comments by the teacher (directed at him) were a bit of a joke, even if they weren't intended to be.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I once played a friend's father who took great issue with me when I exchanged queens, claiming this killed off any interest in the game. I was still interested, though, as it led to an advantage and a win. We didn't play again.