Weird Stalemate loss - please help me understand!

This was a couple days back, so numbers may not be exact.

I had one opponent left (green), who was down to a King but led by 10 points.  After a hard-fought battle, I could relax and get an easy checkmate.  I queened my last pawn, put green into check (mate in 1), then, as planned, green made the only possible move, and then...

Boom.

Game over. 

Green was awarded 20 points (and the win).  

This seems counter-intuitive, to say the least!  So far, it's the only rule of 4-player chess that has really thrown me for a loop. 

It seems to me that the stalemate rules ought to be:

* Only stalemate if player cannot move on his/her turn.

* Getting stalemated = +20 points for you

Even if there's a rationale for the "instant reward for moving into stalemate" when there are 3 or 4 players (which I also don't really understand, to be honest), I feel it's an outright horrible rule once only 2 players remain. 

TL;DR: 2 queens vs. 1 king should not be this tricky to win!!

yup I have seen a video of this happening, it's probably a bug due to "when you put someone into stalemate you get 20 points" even if you do it to yourself

What happened in your game is an excellent demonstration of the oddity of this rule. A rule that doesn't make much sense, but nevertheless it gives the game a feeling similar to normal chess. I think that the modification you propose is reasonable enough.

See these topics:

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/stalemate-bug

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/topic-of-stalemates

The developers are aware of it. First noted as a bug, but then it stayed as a feature since some liked it.

This is the method I suggest with the current rules to avoid stalemates. Never check the opponent and stalemate him with a queen. I don't care if I look stupid spending way too many more moves than I need to.

While I do agree that the rule should be fixed, you need a change of attitude. Saying something is bad without any argument why and calling everyone with a different opinion stupid is not the best way to discuss things. In fact it makes you look stupid.

This was discussed in detail today and we're working on a fix! This is definitely a bug and not a feature. 

ok, thanks for the update! I will be happy to see it fixed. 

me too!

here's a game I had lost by a similar stalemate, I had one opponent remaining and took all his remaining pawns cause we were almost equal in points, so I was 4 points ahead and went for the checkmate, but then this happened - I checked, the King got into stalemate, and I lost  

Awesome!  Thanks for following up!

@Martin0 #7

Probably a topic in its own right, but this could actually make for some interesting chess puzzles... given the many different combinations of pieces with which (normal) checkmate can be given:

1) Are there any where checkmate is not possible with the stalemate bug?

2) For others, what's the series of moves to checkmate?  As you show, even with 2 queens, this can be deceptively difficult (an aside - I think you have typo on the very last move, shouldn't that be 8. Qg8?)

Last move was not a typo. 8.Qc7 put black in stalemate and since stalemate = mate (with current rules) it is a winning move.