English Chess Forum

A question for the arbiters on here:

This occurred at a match yesterday. I was the captain of one of the players.

Black makes a move and presses the clock. Shortly afterwards he offers a handshake. I move a bit closer to see what's happening. White asks "What, are you resigning?". Black withdraws his hand and says "I was going to because I thought I'd blundered but I can see now I haven't".

What should happen next?

It doesn't look like resignation.

All that seems to have happened is that a player has put his hand out, then answered a question by saying he isn't resigning.

So I guess the game just continues.

This is always a difficult one - the opponent is right of course to ask if he is resigning, because if the position is not lost then he might simply be offering a draw.

Article 5.1b of FIDE Laws of Chess wrote:The game is won by the player whose opponent declares he resigns. This immediately ends the game.

is pretty clear although you will hear people argue that offering to shake hands, pausing the clocks, etc. are valid methods of resigning.

The problem with regarding a hand shake or pausing the clocks as a legally binding resignation is that there are perfectly reasonable alternative reasons for these actions and so if there is any doubt then it is not a binding resignation. White was quite right to double check first and then to play on.

Clever gamesmanship.

What actually happened next was that white claimed that he'd heard black say he resigned and black denied it. I was not close enough to have heard one way or the other, although the player on the next board later told me he'd heard black say he resigned. In the absence of any proof the game carried on with white being awarded extra time.

The position was easily winning for black, so I have no idea what he was thinking. White couldn't even make a threat, let alone have a winning move.

Sounds like he was just showboating his win and giving his opponent false hope to me.

I dunno, people do have the strangest notions at times!