When do chess players resign?
Players resign on move 29.0 on average.
every level and clock · 1.2B games
When players resign, by rating
From move 21.8 at the lowest rating to move 31.5 at the highest.
When players resign, by time control
| Clock | Average move | Games | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22.2 | 40.9% | 1.3% | 442,795 | |
| 25.5 | 31.8% | 4.2% | 262,832,622 | |
| 29.9 | 23.3% | 9.4% | 706,733,097 | |
| 30.0 | 25.8% | 11.0% | 259,075,662 | |
| 30.3 | 26.4% | 12.2% | 9,870,904 |
Choose a clock to read the page at it.
Methodology
Players resign on move 29.0 on average. Scope: every level and clock. Sample: 1,238,955,080 resignations. Rated Lichess games played September 2023 to August 2026. TrueElo analysis of Lichess data. This sample counts resignation endings, a subset of analyzed games; it excludes games ended by checkmate or other results.
When citing manually, include the source URL and your access date.
https://trueelo.app/stats/resignation-timingHow the figures are made
- How to read this page
- A resignation's move is the full move the game ended on: move 20 is White's twentieth move and Black's reply.
- Whose games these are
- 1B+ rated games played on Lichess (2023-09 to 2026-08). The games are Lichess’s and free for anyone to use. What is ours is the reading of them. Last rebuilt September 2026.
- Which games we count
- Rated games only — nothing casual.
- Both players within 200 rating points of each other. A mismatch tells you about the gap, not about the opening.
- At least 2 moves played.
- A game is filed under White’s rating.
- Why every number comes with a range
- A number off a few hundred games is a guess. The same number off millions is a fact. The range is what tells them apart, and it is what the lists rank on — so an opening cannot reach the top on a lucky run of forty games. The more games behind a figure, the narrower its range.
Frequently Asked Questions
When do chess players typically resign?
On average, players resign around move 29 based on 1.2B Lichess games. 25.7% of resignations happen before move 20 (quick losses), while 8.6% occur after move 50 (long battles).
Do higher-rated players resign later?
Yes. At 2500+, players resign around move 31.5; at 0-999, around move 21.8.
Should I resign earlier or later?
At 0-999, players resign at move 21.8 on average, 9.7 moves earlier than at 2500+. Lower down it is worth playing on, since opponents blunder it back, and higher up it is usually over, so spend the time on the next game.
Does time control affect resignation timing?
Yes. Players resign earliest in UltraBullet, around move 22.2, and latest in Classical, around move 30.3.
How many resignations come before move 20?
25.7% of resignations happen before move 20 and 8.6% after move 50. The remaining 65.7% come between moves 20 and 50.
How reliable is the resignation timing data?
This rests on 1.2B games that ended in a resignation, from Lichess. Set the rating and the clock to your own to see your level; the fewer games behind a band, the more the figure moves.