Author: Louis Fagliano
Date: 10:38:30 10/09/02
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On October 09, 2002 at 12:43:17, Roy Eassa wrote: >On October 09, 2002 at 12:34:28, Louis Fagliano wrote: > >>On October 09, 2002 at 12:10:54, Brian Thomas wrote: >> >>>A lot of interesting points so far! >>> >>>What's interesting is that on the very amateur level in which I play, I find >>>most people resign out of frustration and being in an inferior position rather >>>than a calculated, certain loss. This seems to go against the essence of idea. >>> >>>Of course, perhaps the most reasonable point of all is: "The rules allow it." >>>In all athletic sports this isn't allowed, at least no sports to my knowledge. >>> >>>Brian >> >>That's because it's not called resigning. It's called forfeiting the game and >>that can be done at any time during any athletic sports game. The only >>difference is that it is considered very poor sportsmanship whereas in chess not >>resigning and dragging a game on to checkmate is what is considered very poor >>sportsmanship. > > >I think he was asking WHY it is considered poor sportsmanship in one and the >opposite in the other. Again, it's because of the random factors. In an athletic sports game there are random factors in the play of the atheletes where anything could happen up until the last minute, similar to a board game with dice rolls or the drawing of cards. Thus, it's worth it to "play it out" and considered bad form not to. In chess, where there are no random factors, if in a certain endgame, a player knows how to queen a pawn and then use that queen to checkmate, everything is cut and dried and there's no need to continue as there are no surprise dice rolls or whatever to upset the routine technical finish. It's like in football where the last tackler is about twenty yards behind the runner who is heading for the end zone there is no shame in stopping the chase (although forfeiting the game at that point would be different).
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