How to Resign with honor

Originally posted by Armagoden
I am not sure many newcomers or novices know how to resign a game. Now I know it's nice to play it out to the end sometimes, but when all is totally lost come on already resign and get on to a new game.
Be a gentleman congratulate your opponent and gracefully resign. Its easy just type a message like: Great game enjoy it, congrats.
and then press the ...[text shortened]... always nice to start a new game and forget the old one you just lost. More on as they say. LOL

What's the problem? Don't you enjoy playing games you are winning? I do. In fact I sometimes feel a bit dissapointed if my opponent resigns.

On another note, when I see games annotated by GM's I often see comments like "... and because white didn't want to see 31... Rxh1+ where 32. Kxh1 leads to ...Qh5+ 33. Kg1 Qh2+ with mate to follow, he resigned." I don't hear top players talk of resignation as a courtesy they owe their opponent but as a priveledge that allows them to escape an agonizing struggle against the inevitable or watching themselves get brutally checkmated.

Opponents don't always want you to resign. Some time ago I played a game where I had the classic smothered mate complete with queen sacrifice.
Game 1058604
I'm sure my opponent saw it coming but let me play it out and I was gateful. Less obvious however, I once resigned in an OTB club game only to have my opponent ask to play on. (He wanted to be sure he knew the concept of the ensuing endgame, though it was lost for me any way you looked at it.)

On the other end of the spectrum, even if I knew absolutely that my opponent was prolonging a lost game out of some sort of spite, to me the worst thing I could do is to show them any sign that this bothers me. The best way to do this is to expect to have to prove the win no matter how ugly it gets, but if my opponent decides to save us both the trouble, fine.