"...but what is your defence of someone who's about to be mated
who neither makes a move, nor resigns ."
We must not discuss games in progress (GIP's).
So I shall discuss a scenario from games that have finished.
Muggins is about to be mated by Higgins.
Muggins looks at Higgins other games and sees he is winning those too.
So Muggins holds off resigning for as long as possible hoping Higgins
can score a few more wins pushing up his grade thus make the points
dropped by Muggins fewer.
Other reasons for not resigning or choosing to lose on a timeout.
If you check the history you may find the players have played before
this is revenge for that player doing the same to them.
(not aplicaple in this case.)
When making the move that will mate next move against any defence
the winner may have sent a message with it.
"....And Mate next move."
or
"Good game but I am check mating you next move."
or
"It's mate you dummy, how on earth did you fall for that?"
That kind of thing and the losing player goes into a huff.
Perhaps the player is saving up all the checkmates against him to see
if he can be checkmated in all 6 games on the same day.
This would not suprise me.
It does appear as if some of the lads on here (God bless them) are under the
impression that getting checkmated actually wins the game and go to
great lengths to get themselves mated.
If you had seen what I have seen you then you would agree. π
One example.
Jamesqt - sica RHP 2008
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bc4 g6 4. Nc3 a6 5. O-O Bg7 6. d3 h6 7. Be3 g5 {An Ok opening by White so far. He has four bits out and has castled. Black has one piece developed.} 8. b4 {Of course he realises if he keeps this up he may lose by checkmating his opponent so he sets the come and mate me trap.} 8... g4 9. Nd2 h5 10. f3 g3 11. hxg3 h4 {White is happy now, his lead in development was just a bluff. Now comes the idea.} 12. Kf2 hxg3+ 13. Kxg3 Qh4 {Ingenious.}