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Playing When You Are Dead In The Water

You're in a situation where the game is completely lost. It is only a matter of how your opponent puts the nail in the coffin. What to do? Resign? Or is there perhaps some opportunity to escape? In this speed game, I found myself at a significant disadvantage after miscalculations and misjudgements. But I continued modestly, not so eager to challenge anything in particular. Being very short on time, I noticed an opportunity to take a square away from the enemy king with a bishop move. This move put me on the brink of death, mate in one, (not exactly what I had in mind as I was moving intuitively under time pressure). But my opponent played something else. After my opponent finally played a move that did not put me in check, I initiated a defensive combination involving a rook-bishop exchange, which granted me a drawish position (or at least according to Stockfish). At this point, I was down to the last five seconds on my clock (no increment), so the combination in itself wouldn't have been enough to save me. However, perhaps in an effort to avoid a draw, my opponent blundered into checkmate by placing his king on f1. Sometimes when one takes little steps to gain chances here and there, the player can somehow survive in an unthinkable manner.
en.lichess.org/buwRzoN5h8MJ
i like it. i rarely resign while theres any play left in the position
It depends. I resign early sometimes. But I feel if there is nothing to learn there is nothing to gain. Its wasted energy that can be put to a new game.

Resign if you are both down on time and down materials. Your call though.
My philosophy is this; resign when you've lost hope. For as long as you can give yourself a sense of hope, there are chances prior to checkmate. But as soon as you cannot imagine a win, the chances go out the door.
Think about all the games you've lost that should've been 'impossible' to lose. In blitz I relatively rarely resign. Things that happen to you happen to everybody else and there's also a nice advantage that when somebody goes up substantial material their rating tends to immediately drop like 400 points.
@#5,#6: On the other hand, not too long ago I had an opponent that played on rook vs rook in a game with a 5 second increment (and after I sarcastically-somehow managed to draw it, he had the audacity to ask me for a rematch). I think that even if you have no "compensation", it's completely acceptable to play on in a lost position if the position is flexible and might eventually dissolve into tactics, but if the game is completely lifeless, you should not play on in a drawn or lost position, even if a win is imaginable through an opponent's completely obscene blunder (such as in the RvR example) - it's disrespectful. If the other person has no time and there's no increment, it can be a different story (it's not an obscene blunder to lose on time, is it?), but I think that's a pretty good rule of thumb.

That being said, I don't *really* care too much if my opponents are disrespectful to me, but it's nice to play someone who will resign and accept draws appropriately. That doesn't apply to your game, though, mruknowwho; playing on was definitely 100% acceptable, as you effectively demonstrated!

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