MOST STUPID RULE : STALEMATE

How many times do I have to say this..stalemate does not mean the king could be captured the next move or is in any danger at all.

"Stalemate is terrible" experience with stalemate

Oh I'll also show an exception to passing and moving anyway

Passing: it is stalemate for both players, so it's still a draw.

Moving Anyway: Black CANNOT Move.

If a player can't deliver checkmate with an overwhelming advantage, why should they be rewarded with a full point?

You may have to say it as long as there are beginners at chess. They often assume that if the king cannot move, it must be attacked or threatened in some way. They sometimes have a hard time visualizing the king being perfectly safe AND not being able to move.

This is a good example where it becomes even more of a problem for the anti stalemate proponents. In a double stalemate, who would be awarded the win?

I’ve salvaged several otherwise lost games the past few days by offering stalemate to an unprepared opponent who squandered time earlier in the game.

I love when they double down like this, so now some stalemates should be a win, others a draw, others a loss lol. Some cases the game ends, others the players skip turns. This all totally makes more sense than just making stalemate a draw!

How could a stalemate be anything but a draw? You've not won, as that requires your opponent to run out of time, to resign, or for you to check the opponent's king and it has no legal moves to get out of check. You've done none of those in a Stalemate position, and winning in chess has nothing to do with how much more material you have. If your opponent checkmates you and you have more material, you still lose. However, you did choose to make a move that left your opponent with no legal moves on the board, so they cannot move. There's no option to "pass", so you've put the game in a situation where there are no moves to play, but nobody has won. That's a draw. If you don't like it, then don't make a move that leaves your opponent with no moves. In the end, it's your choice.

You mean you offered them a draw, not stalemate.

Stalemate is one particular type of draw where the side on move has no legal play.

https://www.chess.com/variants/chess

Whoever is unhappy with the stalemate rule can try the custom rules...

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Probably draws, except that in his case he offers them indirectly in the form of stalemate opportunities.

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From my understanding, in a small minority of cases, some stalemates are not forced, but if the corresponding opponents do not accept these stalemates, they would lose on time instead. It would be an incentive for them to play the stalemating move to preserve the half point parity.

If "the stalemated player wins", I would imagine that a player holding the pawn in a king and pawn versus king endgame would move his king away from the pawn as far as possible if there is no prospect of safe pawn promotion at all.

Maybe they figure all those different options for stalemate would simplify things.

I agree with Eric. He might have meant he offered a stalemate opportunity where the opponent chose to stalemate.

No. I said what I meant. That’s my M.O.

If you think that I meant something different tnan what I said, you’ll be wrong every time (unless my statement was satire).

In a hopeless position, I made a move that gave my opponent a chance to fail. A couple of them obliged. Another game, after I posted this comment, my opponent saw the stalemate and avoided it, only to falter ten moves later.

In one case, underpromotion would have avoided stalemate, but my opponent was under 3 seconds. If I still had a pawn on the board, promoting to a queen with stalemate would be best.

I've lost track of how many times beginners have said in the endgame that their kings cannot move so it is a stalemate. When I point out that they have other pieced they can move they say that their coach taught them the rules and have said that if the king cannot move then it is stalemate regardless of whether or not other pieces can move, and they are very firm and definite in that statement. I then point to a board set up in the starting position and ask them if either king can move, ask them whether or not the starting position is stalemate, and then ask them to explain why the starting position is not stalemate.

White had 3.9 seconds to find the mate in two. Instead, he stalemated me.