Why people refuse to resign?

Dear friends,

I play 10 min games with a ELO score of around 1400-1500.

I wish to discuss why there are so many people on chess.com who simply refuse to resign a losing game. I think it's a lack of respect and a waste of time to not resign when you don't have a decent chance of winning anymore. Hoping for a couple of blunders, running out of time, or a blunderdraw. It annoys the out of me. I block everyone who does that, but they just keep on coming. I also notice some nationalities doing this a lot more than others. I wish there was a pool with opponents that like to play respectfully.

To practice. 

Hmm, ok. To a certain extent I can understand that. Even if several pieces behind.

The thing is these people also don't resign when they only have their king left against say 2 queens. What is there to practice? It's simply finishing the game, with a very minor chance of draw, if the winning person makes a huge blunder. 

ELO 1400-1500 are not beginners. They know the endgame, and they know when they cannot win. I understand practice in 600-1100 regions, but not here. I think it's just bad sportsmanship. 'If I go down, I'll waste your time'.

1400-1500 is nowhere near high enough to be certain your opponent has won just because he's up material, assuming you've lost just because you are a couple of pieces down is a bad assumption to make and it isn't disrespectful to hope for a blunder. I certainly wouldn't feel like I disrespected someone for taking advantage of a blunder in the early game so why should I feel bad for taking advantage of one in the late game? I agree you should resign if you're down to a king but it isn't disrespectful to keep wanting to play whilst there's still a chance to pull it back. Also you mentioned running out of time, in timed chess time is a resource, if your opponent is down material but can see that you're close to timing out he's well within his right to force you to time out. If you're playing 10 minute chess and it took you 10 minutes to get to a "winning" position then clearly you haven't managed your time properly because the 10 minutes is meant to take you all the way to checkmate, not to the point you're ahead on material, so you deserve to lose even if you're up material. If your opponent had been spending as much time as you on moves maybe he wouldn't have blundered so it's completely fair for him to win on time.

Because  you might blunder your win to a stalemate or loss, so they play to the end

That's why

I guess i simply don't understand the mindset. Why would you want to 'win' a game you already lost? Then you both lose basically. It's bad courtesy. It will not make you any better at chess, only annoy the other party and wasting playing time for both.

To me the game is about winning it right, not just about getting a statistical win. The game is beautiful when played right between equal opponents. Blunderous games are ugly, so better to end quickly. 

If you win a game you supposedly "already lost" then clearly you hadn't already lost it. If you were playing Magnus Carlsen then yes you would already have lost it but you aren't playing Carlsen, you're playing a 1400-1500 player and capitalising on blunders is part of winning at that level. By your logic if you score a goal in a local football match it doesn't count unless it goes in the top corner because a professional goalkeeper would have saved it.

Yes indeed. You don't understand that mindset.

As a general rule, to learn the most, safe bet is to never resign. Of course sometimes you just don't feel like playing on so you resign immediately. That is not great, but it happens. A piece up for instance, still doesn't mean an automatic loss (most of the time yes, but it is not certain). If you allow activity to the opponent, anything can happen. Playing on will make you a more resourceful player, which can be used in an equal position as well.

I play longer games and you would be surprised how in some games you can hang on even if computer says +4 for the opponent. A week ago or so, I played a game where I got my bishop trapped and had 2 pawns for it. The engine showed +5 at certain moment, but I was able to exchange everything, and have a dangerous passed pawn, so the opponent just couldn't win the game after all the exchanges, so it ended in a draw. There are more extreme examples, this was just a basic one.

Now for the other thing. 10|0 is speed chess. Anyone playing that time control is signing up for a game where material might not matter much if you get into a time trouble. What does a rook up mean if you are left with 20 seconds on the clock vs 3 minutes and there is still a lot of play left? I mean, if you are called Hikaru Nakamura or Daniel Naroditsky, you will still win that game, but in almost any other case, you are pretty much done for.

Chess is a game of precision, and 1 move can cancel out everything you did. So, in some cases, playing on is not futile.

In the end, it is completely up to you if (and when) you wish to resign or not.

what he is saying is when you are down 2 a king and have 30secs left why dont u resign

Hah. I'm one of those "douchebags" that would play you in a losing position because the probability of losing a game after hitting resign is 100%

i understand and i am like that. but sometimes the position is so lost that the other party just make me wait 15 mins. like they dont move

very annoyying

i dont resign unless its a forced mate or smth

i understand that mindset but im talking about people who just try and make it annoying for u

What time? It's a 10/0. 

If you have two queens against a king and they are moving with any reasonable speed we are talking about what, maybe 30 seconds? Stalling by running clock thinking about what is an obvious move is a different issue. 

The real reason people get upset about this is because so many people do resign even when down significant material we don't get much practice converting, especially under any time pressure, which makes it easier to screw up. This gets even worse for players that block opponents that don't resign because now they are getting even less match practice. 

Someone refusing to move for 15 mins is absolutely bad etiquette and should be reported but that's not what OP is talking about. OP is claiming it's bad etiquette to try and recover from a losing position which is nonsense (especially in his timing out situation because half the point of blitz is time management), if you blunder from a winning position and end up losing then you deserve to lose and your opponent deserved to win.

bread thats what im saying exactly

I wouldn't normally look through someone's history but I wanted to understand an example of the complaint so I found this where OP blundered 2 rooks in a row.

Don't take this the wrong way OP but this game says to me that your policy of blocking people that don't resign is hurting your chess because even as someone that's a couple of hundred points below you some of your endgame moves don't make sense. Even once you lost your rooks (which is easily done) you were in a massive winning position because you had all 4 pawns on the right hand side in play Vs Black's 2. You could have easily overwhelmed black if you'd moved them up together instead of sending them up one at a time (on move 46 if you'd played f5 you basically would have won because black couldn't have stopped you promoting a pawn). It feels like from this game you're very good at openings but because you (presumably) resign when a piece down and block people that don't you don't have much experience of endgames and that means you're prone to endgame blunders. 

All true. The thing is that I get really annoyed that I have to continue playing a game that is basically over. I just wanna be done with it and move to the next. It feels like a waste of time. So I don't focus anymore. 

By the way, the blocking makes no difference at all