energy wrote:I disagree with most of what cohonas said.
Almost all the really good players I've met has had this in common; They hate to lose. They will fight as long as they have a plan, unless they have to consider conserving their energy for the next game. As for myself, I have saved countless games after first blundering material, by fighting twice as hard afterwards. (Many players will relax after they notice they have gained an advantage.)
I think you learn only by playing, not resigning. Personally I'll resign when I can't find a plan, with some chance of unclear play, any more. Note that setting up a fortress and moving the king back and forth can sometimes be a valid plan...
Nils
cohonas wrote:So say you are a queen down with no compensation and you come up with a great plan to prolong the game...
That doesn't make sense at all. If you have a great plan you have compensation by definition, and the position must be considered
unclear. You should play on to learn if your plan really is great, and if you actually evaluated the possibilities right. If it truly was great, you'd be sure to learn a lot even if ultimately losing.
cohonas wrote:The argument here is about why people don't resign when they are _hopelessly_ lost and choose not to resign, that is what i responded to, if you can come up with a reasonable plan you are obviously not hopelessly lost...
You are consistently arguing in foggy consepts like "hopelessly lost", "reasonable plan" and so on, that means different things to different people at different times. Then you draw absolute conclusions, like:
cohonas wrote:
When you are hopelessly down material it is a decisive disadvantage and unless you realize that and resign you won't learn from it and develop a sound positional understanding.
This is just plain wrong, of course you can learn from it, of course you can develop a sound positional understanding by playing on. It's quite the opposite; It's when you resign too early that you risk missing valuable lessons.
cohonas wrote:
I am not arguing that you learn just from resigning, please re-read my post
That's
exactly what you argued, as you can see from the quote above. Here's another silly quote:
cohonas wrote:
It seems from previous discussions on this subject that some players view it as a question of "never giving up no matter what" and that attitude can win a game, well in odd cases your opponent will blunder back as bad as you did*,
but unless you start thinking differently you will most likely face those same level players as your level will probably stay the same because if you keep yourself believing that chess is a game of chance then you have obviously missed a very important point.
The level of a player always playing to the bitter end will "probably stay the same"? Chess
is a game of chance. It's also a sport. And a science of sorts. And a lot more.
I would not enjoy playing against somone never giving up, I consider it rude. But I'm not going to invent hillarious arguments for why people should do as I like.
There's at least thre more quotes from previous posts I consider superficial and silly, but I'm sure this is getting as boring for you as it is for me.
cohonas wrote:
and just in case i didn't make myself clear, the learning you can get from this is to resign when you blunder badly and theoreticly there is nothing you can do to turn the game around, as the better you get as a chessplayer the margain of error becomes increasingly smaller.
"Theoretically" lost positions are such a small subset of all lost positions, to make this argument almost uninteresting. Aditionally, you have to learn positions known in theory (books/databases) too, and most people learn the best by playing.
cohonas wrote:
Setting up a fortress is not a valid plan when you are hopelessly down material and you are completely lost.
There you go again with your "hopelessly" and "completely". Most times you can't know if it was hopeless unless you try to play, chess is a complex game and individual peoples knowledge is finite.
In the end, I still disagree with almost all you
said, but maybe not with the idea that made you say it. A player playing on just to be an . is contemptible, but only that player can truly know why (s)he plays on.
Nils