Someone wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} davidmoodychess, |
In my first tournament I resigned after an exchange I thought was unfavorable. It was complicated and my simple math about piece value told me that it was unequal, when really in terms of position and pieces exchanged, I was in fact fine. I thought I'd screwed up 'cause I'd miscalculated where the exchanges would end up and promptly threw in the towel out of as much despair as disgust. My much more experienced opponent accepted my resignation, then steered me straight to the skittles room where he ascertained why I resigned a perfectly playable position, explained why I was still OK after the exchanges and counselled me not to be so quick to resign in the future.
It seems to me that you sometimes suffer not just from impulse moves, but from impulse resignations. You need to sit tight until the impulse passes. ;-)
I won't resign a bad position if I've still got (or at least *think* I've got) some way to continue fighting. There is a school of thought that if your opponent is really good you shouldn't play on in the hope that he'll blunder...but I played a game against a guy who was rated about 600 points above me. I blundered a *piece* in the opening. I was sick at heart, mortified, rattled...but not so rattled that I didn't see a sleezy tactical shot as I desperately scanned the shambles on the board. It depended on my opponent also screwing up, but it worked. I made what appeared to be another bad move and he, seeing as how I was rated around 1100, had just blundered a simple opening and was now throwing more material away...walked straight into my sleezy desperate trap. And lost his queen. I think when the dust settled from the resulting exchanges it was something like a knight and a couple of pawns for his queen. :-) Losing that Q drove him crazy...and then I fought like a tiger, bolstered by my miraculous recovery. Afterward he told me just how maddeningly frustrated he was during the game, because although he was a much better player than I was, I had a material advantage for most of the game. In the end we drew. He struggled mightily, but could not win. I had learned my lesson about impulsive resignations well: I salvaged half a point and picked up some rating points by drawing a player rated so far above me.
I don't think that every game has to be played out to the bitter end; if you've stumbled into a forced mate or have lost so much material that the only way you'll win is if your opponent drops dead, or if your opponent is just methodicaly taking you apart and there just isn't *anything* you can do to stop the bleeding, then yeah, go ahead and resign. But, FIRST, lock your jaw, sit on your hands, clear your mind and look at the position on the board *hard*---look for *anything* that might give you a fighting chance.
There's a line from an old Al Stewart song called "Almost Lucy" that comes to mind: "It sharpens your perception when your back's against the wall." :-)
-----Scheherazade
It seems to me that you sometimes suffer not just from impulse moves, but from impulse resignations. You need to sit tight until the impulse passes. ;-)
I won't resign a bad position if I've still got (or at least *think* I've got) some way to continue fighting. There is a school of thought that if your opponent is really good you shouldn't play on in the hope that he'll blunder...but I played a game against a guy who was rated about 600 points above me. I blundered a *piece* in the opening. I was sick at heart, mortified, rattled...but not so rattled that I didn't see a sleezy tactical shot as I desperately scanned the shambles on the board. It depended on my opponent also screwing up, but it worked. I made what appeared to be another bad move and he, seeing as how I was rated around 1100, had just blundered a simple opening and was now throwing more material away...walked straight into my sleezy desperate trap. And lost his queen. I think when the dust settled from the resulting exchanges it was something like a knight and a couple of pawns for his queen. :-) Losing that Q drove him crazy...and then I fought like a tiger, bolstered by my miraculous recovery. Afterward he told me just how maddeningly frustrated he was during the game, because although he was a much better player than I was, I had a material advantage for most of the game. In the end we drew. He struggled mightily, but could not win. I had learned my lesson about impulsive resignations well: I salvaged half a point and picked up some rating points by drawing a player rated so far above me.
I don't think that every game has to be played out to the bitter end; if you've stumbled into a forced mate or have lost so much material that the only way you'll win is if your opponent drops dead, or if your opponent is just methodicaly taking you apart and there just isn't *anything* you can do to stop the bleeding, then yeah, go ahead and resign. But, FIRST, lock your jaw, sit on your hands, clear your mind and look at the position on the board *hard*---look for *anything* that might give you a fighting chance.
There's a line from an old Al Stewart song called "Almost Lucy" that comes to mind: "It sharpens your perception when your back's against the wall." :-)
-----Scheherazade
