How can I avoid stalemate?

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Avatar of mateocruz00

I keep stalemating and its annoying, how could I have checkmated him? And what are some studies I can study to avoid stalemates or something to keep in mind

https://www.chess.com/game/137848756532

Avatar of RRT20

Always check the spaces that the opponent's king can and can't move and make sure he always has at least one square where he can move.

Avatar of affan1406

Check the spaces king can and can't move

Avatar of BlueKnightShade
mateocruz00 wrote:

I keep stalemating and its annoying, how could I have checkmated him? And what are some studies I can study to avoid stalemates or something to keep in mind

https://www.chess.com/game/137848756532

Well, in this particular game you could have checkmated him by playing

55. Qb1# instead of 55. Qd1. There were also mates possible earlier on, 43. Re5# and 45. Qe7# could be done.
One way to avoid stalemate in games where you have a lot of pieces where the opponent can only move the king is to always make moves that give a check even if it means losing material. The stalemate risk is too high if you have a lot of pieces against a lonely king, so give checks.

Avatar of magipi
mateocruz00 wrote:

I keep stalemating and its annoying, how could I have checkmated him? And what are some studies I can study to avoid stalemates or something to keep in mind

https://www.chess.com/game/137848756532

I am not sure that you know what stalemate is. You should look it up. It's extremely difficult to avoid stalemate if you don't know what it is.

If you know what stalemate is, you still need to use your head and try to checkmate instead of stalemating. Playing random moves without thinking is not a good idea.

Look at that game again. Your opponent blundered his last piece, the queen on move 40. At this point you were ahead a queen and 2 rooks and had more than one and a half minutes to figure out how to checkmate. Your first golden opportunity was move 42 where you had at least 4 different ways to checkmate in 1. Instead, you made a random move without thinking. This continued for 12 more moves, you played random moves and you kept getting away with them, until you suddenly weren't getting away with the last one.

Don't play random moves. Use your time and think.

Avatar of theGoodtheBadandtheCuddly

this must be the most positive forum ever created about stalemate.

Avatar of Fr3nchToastCrunch

When in doubt, only play checks.

Avatar of MagMalol

There is multiple ways to look at it.
1. If you ALWAYS give checks, stalemate is impossible.
2. Look up/learn basic checkmating patterns, it seems you have 0 clue on the proper way to checkmate someone.
3. Take your time, calculate ok if i move here, where can my opponent move. 
If you do ANY of these 3 things, you will not stalemate, if you do ALL of them you will NEVER stalemate

Avatar of magipi
MagMalol wrote:

There is multiple ways to look at it.
1. If you ALWAYS give checks, stalemate is impossible.
2. Look up/learn basic checkmating patterns, it seems you have 0 clue on the proper way to checkmate someone.
3. Take your time, calculate ok if i move here, where can my opponent move. 
If you do ANY of these 3 things, you will not stalemate, if you do ALL of them you will NEVER stalemate

If you do the 2nd and the 3rd option, you can forget the first one.

The first one is simply bad. Giving random checks isn't going to help anyone win any games.

Avatar of theGoodtheBadandtheCuddly

the first one is the clincher though!

Avatar of MagMalol
magipi wrote:
MagMalol wrote:

There is multiple ways to look at it.
1. If you ALWAYS give checks, stalemate is impossible.
2. Look up/learn basic checkmating patterns, it seems you have 0 clue on the proper way to checkmate someone.
3. Take your time, calculate ok if i move here, where can my opponent move. 
If you do ANY of these 3 things, you will not stalemate, if you do ALL of them you will NEVER stalemate

If you do the 2nd and the 3rd option, you can forget the first one.

The first one is simply bad. Giving random checks isn't going to help anyone win any games.

You are completely correct, but when this advice is going to a 200 i feel its valid. They just don't "see" that oh the king has no more moves here, i feel with him being a 200 as long as he insures to do checks atleast stalemate is prevented, sure may he never reach checkmate, potentially nervous. But atleast stalemate won't occur

Avatar of MagMalol
Very random but I thought i would show a very basic and brief example of how to checkmate with king and queen only. You basically want to move your opponents king to the point where they are stuck on one of the sides of the board. From there you bring in your king to the point where the queen can checkmate. As you can see i also did not check the king once and was still able to do it, it is simply about restricting space
Avatar of blueninja4747
When the king is in the corner, be careful
Avatar of Dark-slave

Technobalde never dies

Avatar of Steve97a

I AM THE STALEMATE KING !!!!

FEAR THE STALEMATE KING !!!!

Avatar of KamTheMan11

I know this is not about stalemate, but you missed a free queen on move 28, and on move 36, where you decided not to promote, which would have went like:
fxe8=Q+, Kc7, Re7+, Kd6, Qd7#

Avatar of KamTheMan11

Also, you can just draw lines of where your pieces can move to before you make a move. Make sure the king has a spot to move, and will still have a spot when you play a move.

Avatar of Mazetoskylo

You get stalemated more often than you stalemate your opponent, which is rather a good thing. tongue.png

Just play longer time controls, and think before you move. Your stalemate problem comes from the fact that you are playing random moves too fast.

Avatar of u_n_k_0_w_n

You can avoid statemate by offering a draw or resigning

Avatar of Fr3nchToastCrunch
u_n_k_0_w_n wrote:

You can avoid statemate by offering a draw or resigning