I can explain my point another way...

The whole plan of the game is to put an attack on the king (directly or indirectly ie queenside play first)

But then the stalemate rule comes along (*just when your about to do that!*) and says:

"ok... but dont attack the king too well! Dont do your job too well, be careful to prance about the king when you are totally dominating him" otherwise its a draw!

stalemate is the ultimate mating net...

This is the contradiction im getting at. Stalemate always comes when you are just about to achieve your objective of putting a mating attack on a king.

Ive taught many people chess... they all laugh at the stalemate rule as illogical. Probably you did too when you first saw it...

in my humble nobody opinion, chess needs to remain the way it is forever forward!!hehe  i want to be able to pass on the game and not complicate it and make it confusing to future generations.  what are they going to say from now, oh - back in 1972 we studied so and so a game and can see the brilliance behind the grandmasters.  if we change the game then we lose all the rich history of the grandmasters of the past. 

Monster_with_no_Name, again you try to give your own (and wrong) interpretation of the rules and goals of chess. First you talked about capturing the king, now about attack on it. Go to FIDE site, read the rules: the goal is to checkmate. Period. Why is it so difficult to understand?

The point of the game is to trap the king while checking him at the same time. Capturing the king is not an option in chess and it is also illegal for the king to walk into check. 

Since this is a game and not an actual war, there are going to be technicalities. A checkmate first requires a check. If you don't have that then the game can't just be over. The other problem would be that the opponent has no legal moves. But running out of legal moves is not a requirement to lose unless you're also in check.

So in a position where the side with a lone king is not in check and has no moves, the game can't continue without that side doing something illegal. And since the winning side can't move until the guy with the king moves the game just can't continue. You have a game where neither side can win which is a stalemate.

I dont know, why you are afraid of too many draws. From your 4,000 blitz games, only 3% ended with a draw.

At club and professional level OTB around 30% are draws. That's not a lot. The game is not dead at all.

If the stalemate rule were abolished, King+Pawn vs King would always be won for the former side and therefore material will become much more important, leading to boring games where each side is overly careful.

Nothin worse than helpin people.....

I'll reiterate that this debate is pointless and impossible because the 2 sides of the argument literally can't understand where the other side is coming from.

It's not a shot at anyone's capacity, it's just pointing out that you're having a debate using the same words (e.g., the game of chess) where each side is defining those words completely differently.

A thought experiment to illustrate my point. Let's say that two people were given a box and told to debate about "the thing in the box". The first person's box contains chocolate cake. The second person's box contains a dog turd.

The first person starts by saying "The thing in the box is a delicious snack." The second responds "You are crazy, no one would ever think about eating this. The only thing that would eat this is a dog, but we would find it disgusting." The first counters "Dogs can't eat this, it would kill them!" The second says "False, it's a way for dogs to get secondary nutrition." Then the two people would start calling eah other names.

If the two people knew that they were using the same term (thing in the box) to describe two different things, the debate would be much different. "Your idea of the thing in the box would be a nutritional snack, however, my idea of it is worthless and disgusting." If they could first agree as to which "thing in the box" they were going to debate about, they might actually get somewhere.

If this debate is going to accomplish anything, we need to stop assigning our own pre-set definitions to the words that the opponent is using and try to understand what the opponent actually means, then respond in a way that the opponent understands. The most effective way to "win" an argument is to ignore what you yourself care about and instead appeal to what your opponent cares about.

This was a public service announcement. Re-commence shouting at each other.

EDITED: For egregious misuse of i.e. vs. e.g.

No stalemate and king can move into check? so.. we could basically castle thru/away from check?

Sounds like a party to me, add in the right for any player to pass and refrain from moving and its sure to be a hit! =D

No castle, no en-passant and no 2 stepping pawns.

ye you are right...

its time to abandon this thread

sounds good

The thread will end when people are tired of it.  If you are no longer interested in the thread then stop reading it.  There problem solved, now stop trying to enforce your will on everyone else.

johnkorean, I see what you are trying to say but have to disagree. Earlier you presented it as "rules define spirit" vs "spirit deines rules" debate. But for me the latter is just too confusing because we disagree about the spirit of chess already: for you it's a war game, for me it's more logic and math game. So I am strongly for "rules define spirit" way of thinking.

@Monster_with_no_name:

I think you are going a little to far in saying that the stalemated side should be forced to move their king into check. After all, this isn't always possible.

As I said before, when in stalemate, the player must break one of the rules of the game (i.e. You cannot move your own king into check, and, you MUST move.)

Therefor, when one player must break a rule of the game it seems very logical for the stalemated player to lose the game.

No rule is broken, nobody must move - the game is already ended!!! You don't oblige somebody to move after a checkmate, do you? It's same here just with different outcome.

Let's say we get into this theoretical position. How would you solve it without the stalemate rule? (Yes, this might never happen in a real game, just consider it a "study position")

It looks more like a go position Well, black is controlling more territory here...