Questions regarding the written rules, or the unwritten customs, that concern proper behavior in the world of chess.
Any questions concerning what is considered proper chess behavior, either according to written rules or unwritten customs, would fall under this tag. Some examples that illustrate this sort of question:
How do you keep chess fun when the only person that wants to play against you beats you all the time? I am struggling to want to keep playing, because I get smashed all the time, and it is not fun anymore.
Suppose you win a game in a noncompetitive way, when you know your opponent cannot feel good about his play. Maybe he dropped his queen early, to a simple tactic that should have been evident for a player of his level, for example.
Do you say "Good…
One of my opponents at chess.com just stopped moving after falling into objectively losing position, refused to resign, and made me wait for 20 minutes to claim a win by time.
I've recently resumed my online chess activity and I have experienced…
On LiChess, FM knightprince gave a simul where I participated (our game). I blundered a pawn played a pawn gambit, but managed to complicate things and won it back. Afterwards, the game would have led to a drawn endgame.
The FM offered a draw; I…
Watching recaps of the 2021 Candidates Tournaments, so many games end in consecutive repeating moves. I have a general impression that lots of top level games are drawn by repeating moves. Why do the grandmasters do this instead of offering a draw?
In a amateur game, black offered a handshake and white shook hands with him and neither spoke any word and the game ended. Later they had a dispute whether the game is a draw or a win for white. Black claimed that his offering of a handshake was a…
When I am playing friendly games with my brother, if one of us makes a big blunder that would make it pointless to continue playing, instead of quitting, we undo the move(s) to give a second chance (if we both agree, otherwise the one that did the…
Yesterday I was playing with a friend, I was almost out of time, he checked me, didn't say anything, I didn't see the check as i was in a hurry to make my move. And I was mated.
Computers don't let you play any move when you're in check. Therefore…
I play online chess at 3 days per move. I like to tell my opponents how I'm going to checkmate them if they will never win. That way, that I won't waste time continuing the game. I also like to be told if I will be mated for the same reason.
The…
I'm in two minds here.
The good sportsman says you should always let your opponent know (maybe limited to once per game).
The more hard-nosed part of me says that managing the clock is part of the game and rules like anything else. If you are…
Once, when I felt it was time to give up, instead of resigning in some conventional way such as knocking over my king, I saw that I had a helpmate in one, so I decided to go for that. This happened when I was playing a board in a simul. When the…
For example, instead of capturing (and therefore exchanging) the queen on d8, white moved his queen from d1 to d7, and black can capture this queen for free. This is very likely the result of a misclick by white. Another example is moving the king…
I was playing in a tournament once, during a sequence of captures, my opponent could recapture my Knight about 4 different ways. He just removed it and carried on thinking.
What should I have done?
At the international level, I normally see games that are either decided by a draw or one player resigning. It seems that players at the international level don't let the game result in an actual checkmate, and resign before that happens. Do…
I play numerous online chess games and in this question I am self-centred: I play for two purposes:
to win the game, or when winning is unlikely, to draw the game.
to improve my chess skills, which eventually enables me to win/draw more games.
I…
