Chessola

Chess for no good reason, part 32
Sheer disgust

My Most Faithful Reader has requested that I publish more of my wins. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of them at this point in my career. In fact, MFR might want to skip this painful loss completely. However, it does allow a quick discussion of the question: When should you resign?

There is a school--in Michigan, it's Kearsley High School in Flint--which holds that you should never resign. Let's say your position is so bad that your chess judgment tells you it's time to resign. However, to get into such a fix, your chess judgment must be lousy, so why should you trust it by resigning?

If that's the way you're going to play, fine with me. With all the lost positions I get, it's a pleasure playing one that's dead won. In fact, I prefer that you fight tooth and nail for every pawn and square till the bitter end. If you're just going to make random moves and try to get the game over with quickly, you're just wasting both of our times.

Generally, I have these criteria for resigning:

1) Lost position. This is not too important, since I get one nearly every game.
2) No counterplay.
3) Opponent has shown the ability to win the game.
4) Most importantly, I'm no longer having fun playing. I can resist a lot longer in interesting positions.

Of course, these can mean different things to different levels of players. But for me, at least, there is a fifth factor.

5) Sheer Disgust, which I can best explain by finally getting to the following game. By the way, if my opponent's name seems vaguely familiar, he would later become a Master and edit a collection of Reshevsky's games.

Moody,David (1640) - Gordon,Stephen W. (1808) [B08]
U.S. Open Lincoln, Neb. (11), 21.08.1975
1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Bc4 0–0 6.Be3 c6 7.Qd2 b5 8.Bb3 Ng4 9.Bg5 Nd7 10.h3 Ngf6 11.Bh6

A rather singleminded continuation.

11...a6 12.Bxg7 Kxg7 13.e5 dxe5 14.dxe5 Nd5?

No, I can't explain this move, nor why I just didn't take the free pawn with 15.Nxd5 and 16.Bxd5. This is just another indication of my mood on this day.

15.0–0–0 e6 16.Ne4 Qc7 17.Nd6? Nxe5

Black, on the other hand, does nt miss his chance.

18.Nxe5 Qxd6 19.f4 f6 0–1?

My resignation can only be blamed on Sheer Disgust. I was still mad at myself for blowing the pawn, and now thought that 20.Nf3 Qxf4 would win a second pawn and force the queens off the board--completely missing that 20.Nd3 would save the pawn. Hence, the premature resignation--though it seems with the way that I was playing perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

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