beginner needing advice

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dumdumnigel1

Hi all. I am a beginner and so far my experience has been generated by trying to encourage my 6 1/2 year old son to become interested in chess so that we have a common and consuming interest.

Its kind of working on him, but for me - the bug has bitten, and I find myself daily playing my favourite BOT on this site. I'd say I am roughly even if I were counting wins/losses so even though its not a  big flag to fly I am encouraged to keep going back to try another game and improve my awareness. Once or twice I have thrown myself in and randomly played other users who I assume are humans and predictably got a thrashing !

The query I have at the moment is that I have just reached stalemate with BOT (again) and even as a beginner I can see that although the BOT has claimed a stalemate  I believe I had it in a situation where checkmate was one move away (BOT could only move one piece cos I captured all the rest and I am certain that the next move with remaining piece was going to be checkmate). How  does the stalemate /draw process work? 

Gabkwa2114

Stalemate (draw) happens when after your move, your opponent has no LEGAL moves to make. In your case, you mentioned that you took most of his pieces. In my point of view, your move presumably stopped good piece from moving and the king probably also couldn’t move and it was a draw.

Secondly, draw can also happen by the 50-move rule or Threefold Repetition. 50-move role happens when no caoture has been made and no pawn has been moved in 50 moves. Threefold Repetion happens when the same exact position happenes 3 times on the board, regardless of which player’s move created the repetition.

I hope my explanation helps and is not too complicated.

Gabkwa2114

After looking at the game in your account, I saw that your queen move stops the king from moving to g6, h6, g5 and h4. You king also stopped the king from moving to g4, so it was stalemate (draw) as the king (the only piece) could not move. (The bot couldn’t make a LEGAL move.)

tygxc

"How does the stalemate /draw process work?"

++ 5.2.1 The game is drawn when the player to move has no legal move and his/her king is not in check. The game is said to end in ‘stalemate’. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the stalemate position was in accordance with Article 3 and Articles 4.2 – 4.7.

https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/E012023

"daily playing my favourite BOT"
++ Do not play artificially weakened bots. They err, but in a non-human way.
Better play humans. Then analyse your lost games so as to learn from your mistakes.
An excellent book for you and your son is Chess Fundamentals - Capablanca. In only 60 pages it contains all you must know. You can study that book together.

dumdumnigel1

Thankyou all for your replies.

dumdumnigel1

And Merry xmas wherever u are.