Greetings,
In Ireland years ago, in the third and final game of a match against the defending school champion, I came back from a lost position to win the match and the title.
Actually, during the game I'd made an error which resulted in my position collapsing - I ended up a rook and four pawns down. I was rather annoyed with myself, which wasn't helped by his beginning to tell me to resign - in fact, he kept telling me to resign for most of the rest of the game.
This really irritated me - in a positive way!
Determined not to do what he wanted, I played on and - whilst he pfaffed around telling me to resign - eventually set up an unstoppable mate, thus winning the title of school champion.
He complained that I should have resigned earlier during the game.
With considerable satisfaction, I repied, "As the old saying goes, 'Nobody won anything by resigning'".
(
YES!! 
)
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Several years later, during a club night at my local club, the monastic silence was unexpectedly shattered by someone loudly breaking wind.
After a moment's shock, the hall degenerated into laughter amid various comments on the lines of "He's just seen what's coming!"
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One of the club's older players had a habit of using the made-up word "discombobulate(d)" during friendly games with his opponents - "That isolani is about to be well-and-truly discombobulated!"
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As regards "gamesmanship" - or just poor sportsmanship...
Having come over to the UK and playing for a club here, I played an away match against another club.
Their captain, Mario -, had blundered into a mating net - but then started complaining that his opponent - an elderly gentleman who wouldn't say "boo!" to a goose - was not writing down the moves.
A glance at his clock showed that our elderly gentleman had less than 5 minutes on his clock - which no amount of explaining about the rules would stop Mario from demanding that his opponent write them down!
The clocks having been stopped to discuss this, after a quarter of an hour's argument with him, he finally relented following complaints from our captain that he'd write a letter of complaint to the authorities about it.
By then, our gentleman was quite upset by all this, completely missed the mate and lost on time.
It wasn't the only show of poor sportsmanship by Mario that night.
I had been playing one of his young (10-12 year-old) daughters and had won with Black. We went to a quieter part of the hall to do a post mortem - when her father turned up and loudly berated her for her losing move, a blunder.
Everyone still playing their matches could hear him.
I felt quite sorry for her, sitting there with her father openly castigating her in front of all-and-sundry.
Although I wasn't her father, I felt a certain protectiveness towards her - with a certain edge in my voice, I pointed out that we'd
both made errors - after which he eased off.
A couple of years later, I played her again.
On winning that game also, I quietly asked, "Will Daddy be cross?" - she smiled somewhat ruefully.
Kindest regards,
James
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