How To Resign

Table of contents How to indicate resignation When to resign See also Notes Discussion

How to indicate resignation

To resign, say “I resign”. Other approaches include nodding your head^[1], a subtle approach which might only work in the Orient, placing two stones on the board (an illegal move), placing one or more captured stones on the board or placing a stone in a square rather than on an intersection.

The AGA tournament rules require that the player who wants to resign say so with a clear voice: “I resign.”

Japanese expressions are

• “makemashita” “I have lost”
• “arimasen” “There is nothing (I can do)”

When to resign

In BadHabits, we have already mentioned that you should not wait to resign until the game is about to end. But one should not resign too early either. When suffering a big loss, it is wise not to resign immediately. Continue for several moves until your anger or disappointment has cooled down, and you are able to make a positional judgment. Only if this judgment shows that the game is really lost, is resignation appropriate.

Apparently, professional players apply the latter issue with utmost sincerity. We should not be so hard on each other as demanding our opponent to master the professional’s art of resigning.

See also

• /Discussion
• Looking for a place to resign
• Bad Habits:
  • Continue While Dozens Of Points Behind — i.e. try your opponents patience (depends on your strength!)
  • Resign right before the dame are filled — i.e. hope for your opponent to make a mistake, and resign if they do not
  • Resign when winning
• Humour
  • Black should resign if one player has four corners
  • Get Strong at Resigning
  • Nuclear Tesuji (Or, how NOT to resign)

Notes

[1] Bob McGuigan: This head nod is also something of a bow, indicating the superiority of the other player. I’ve seen it only between strong players, like pros, and I think it is understood by the opponent only when both players are strong enough to realize that there is an insurmountable difference on the board.

Discussion

JTron: I live in an area where I see few “live” games, but went to an AGA tournament where everyone who resigned did so by smiling and offering a hand shake. At no point did anyone even say, “I resign”. Is this normal for AGA? Or just a Northern California thing?

mafutrct: This is very normal in all tournaments I was ever at in Europe as well.