Hi people, sorry if this has been discussed at length before, but a quick search didn't reveal anything and I'm an infrequent vistor to the forums.

I recently been participating in many more tournaments and have started to notice people resigning part-way through games, sometimes even when they're in winning positions and certainly when the game could still go either way. I've worked out that they're doing this as soon as it's mathematically impossible for them to reach the next round of the tournament.

Although I'm happy to take the ratings points, this irks me slightly, because I feel like I've been cheated out of a potentially interesting game of chess. Also, I suspect there's a more sinister aspect to it, which is that the resigning player keeps their rating lower than it really should be by throwing games they might have gone on to win. This presumably means that they can compete in banded tournaments that are really below their standard.

Is this commonplace? Is it accepted practise?

the behaviour you found, namely to give up, when one can't reach the next round hasn't been discussed here. (At least I am not awaer of it).

Resigning games to keep a low rating has been discussed. You might want to look up sandbagger or sandbagging ynad you will find not only the behaviour, but also names.

There is not much one can do. The TERis a step in the right direction. BUt as has been discussed in depth a permanent rating floor would be even better.

I'm new to tournaments. I'm back from a break where a lot of games were lost by timeouts so my rating's a bit lower than it was (although the people at my rating seem to be pretty good). But I entered a tournament with no rating limits and today saw all the games come up (group stage). Immediately one player, who is rated more than five hundred more than me, resigned without playing a move. It seems my rating didn't change and so I suppose neither did his. Apart from this being rude, and unsporting (if he didn't want to play such a low rating, he should have entered a different tournament), why would he do this? I am guessing that an early resignation will be a loss in the tournament but will avoid points rating. If you beat someone more than five hundred points below you, does your rating go down?

Why did I not get rating points? Or more to the point, why did he not lose them to discourage him from taking such an abusive step? This seems to be a fault with the system which should penalize him pointswise for resigning two games without making a move. Anyone got any explanation as to what could be happening here? Could his motives have been honourable?

It's a big tourney with a large number of games running at once. He may have other commitments and not be able to play under those time pressures. In that situation he could do just what's happened here, resign all of his games at the same time. Nothing wrong with that, it's the fairest thing for his opponents.

Thanks Kewpie. That makes logical sense. Just for my information, do Tournament games impact ratings and if so after how many moves?

Tournament games have the same effect on ratings as friendly games; during the first 3 moves the game can be deleted, after that there will be ratings points awarded/lost however the game finishes.
I have an idea that something minor is different, maybe automatic termination of abandoned games or somesuch, someone else may know.

Originally posted by Kewpie
Tournament games have the same effect on ratings as friendly games; during the first 3 moves the game can be deleted, after that there will be ratings points awarded/lost however the game finishes.
I have an idea that something minor is different, maybe automatic termination of abandoned games or somesuch, someone else may know.

Originally posted by C J Horse
Tournament games cannot be deleted. Also there is an automatic timeout after two days whether or not you click the skull.

Originally posted by RevRSleeker
I'm of the understanding that correctly predicting auto time out depends upon the time frame of the tourney...subsequent to 'consuming' all timebank naturally, but shorter time frame tourney's appear to auto time out far sooner than longer affairs. What I'm essentially saying is that it would 'appear' that all tourney's don;t auto time out after two days ??