Stalemate, a good way out or a great rule?

Not necessarily. Both players might not see it and the match simply continues.

But I agree with you, I would love to try that out and a chess site like chess.com is an ideal place to do it, simply create a new page were people can try out the "new" chess rules.

That is:

1. king can move to all free squares, like all other pieces can

2. match is won when the king is taken (or when opponent resignes or time runs out)

Stalemate has been treated as a draw for 200 years, but that doesn't make it right.

I agree with GM Larry Kaufman, who argues that Stalemate is the ultimate form of zugzwang, and the player making the move that creates stalemate should win.

On the other hand, it taught one of the high school chess players I coached a valuable lesson.  He was stuck around a 900 rating for a couple years, then stopped playing cheap traps and his rating rose to around 1200.  One match, playing a weak, unrated player, he decided to Queen every Pawn he had before applying checkmate, humiliating and torturing his opponent with each move.  BUT after Queening his last Pawn he had five or six Queens on the board and his opponent had no legal move: DRAW by Stalemate!  His face turned green!  He never acted so dispicably again.

You are right, I did not pay enough attention to the word "safe" in your comment. I agree with what you said, that if a piece can be moved, it has to be moved, even if it means capture on the next move. But my question still remains, how does the pro stalemate win scenario apply to other pieces? Would it be only the king that gets captured (win for the stalemating side) under this new rule or would it apply to other pieces too? If any piece can't legally move, but is not being attacked, would the other side just be able to claim it or remove it from the board? Because that's exactly what happens if stalemate is a win. The king isn't attacked, but can't move, so the other side wins that piece.

I totally disagree with Kaufman.  Zugzwang does not equate with Checkmate and the King, the only piece that cannot be captured, cannot be treated in the same vein due to that fact, and since the King has no legal moves, his notion that "it represents the ultimate Zugzwang, where any move would get your king taken" doesn't make sense, as the King has no possible moves.

But that's just my opinion in the matter.

I'm really here to offer some perspective. 

Larry Kaufman, thanks to Wikipedia is often cited when discussing stalemate, but few people really know where his quote originates.

Kaufman published an article in the Sept. 2009 issue of "Chess Life" almost incongruently titled: "Middlegame Zugzwang and a Previously Unknown Bobby Fischer Game."  

 The stalemate-pertinent text of that article reads:
Zugzwang is an important concept in chess. This German word might be translated literally as “relocation compulsion” or in simple English “must move.” The idea is that the right to move in chess is also an obligation; passing your turn is not permitted. There are many positions in chess, mostly in the endgame, where any move you make will ruin your position; you wish you could pass, but you can’t (except in the Korean version of chess). The side forced to make a suicidal move is said to be in Zugzwang. If not for Zugzwang, many more endings would be drawn. In my view, calling stalemate a draw is totally illogical, since it represents the ultimate Zugzwang, where any move would get your king taken. Until around the year 1500 a stalemated player lost. Probably the draw rule was added with the advent of the powerful queen since draws became rare, but that is obviously no longer true in top-level play.

Kaufman's final statement is patently inaccurate. Stalemate has had a much more varied and interesting history.

The earliest rules of Chaturanga considered the side whose king is stalemated the winner while  Shatranj, the Arab game and direct precursor to chess, didn't use this rule and check-mating, stale-mating and baring-the-king were all wins. The Indian idea didn't last long universally in India, but did survive sporadically and in various locales. After the advent of the new Queen (mentioned by Kaufman), "scacchi alla rabiosa," Stalemate began appearing in texts. Previously, in Medieval Chess, it was largely ignored. The Spaniard Lucena called it "mate aogado," with the player who was stalemated losing half his stake. Ruy Lopez, also a Spaniard called it "mate ahogado" with the same result. (A. M. Elmore still called it "El mate Ahoyado" in his 1847 Peruvian book, "Estudios del axedrés, conteniendo una introduccion sistematica al juego."). So, in Spain Stalemate was considered an inferior win but more than a draw. 
In Italy at this time, Stalemate was treated indentical to a draw.
Around the 17th century the common rule in England harkened back to the early Indian treatment that Stalemate was a win for the stalemated side.
The first mention of this Stalemate rule in England occured in Arthur Saul's 1614 book, The Famous Game of Chesse-play" ["He that hath put his adversary's King in a stale, loseth the game, because he hath disturbed the course of the game, which can only end with the grand Check-mate"]. Francis Beales' 1656 edition of Greco's games also assumes that the stalemated side wins. This illogical rule was a feature of English chess for about two centuries. Philidor, who played in both Paris and London, tried in vain to effect a change in that rule. The fascinating Jacob Henry Sarratt, in his 1808 "Treatise on the Game of Chess," put forth his rule #24: "If the King be stale-mate, the game is a drawn game." 
When chess was being codified, particularly during the last half of the 19th century, many issues such as castling, en passant and the 50-move rule were debated. Stalemate as a draw was so firmly in place that is was pretty must accepted as such and never debated.

Curiously, HJR Murray wrote:
"The earliest rules of the game depended upon the parallelism between chess and warfare, and the two main methods of winning the game in early times, viz. checkmate, and the ' baring' of the opponent's King, appear to have been the logical results of the parallelism. The convention—necessary to secure order in the new game,—that the play should proceed by alternate moves, resulted however on occasions in the occurrence of a new situation to which the parallelism of real warfare gave no comparison admitting of a definite decision. This situation, to which we give the name of Stalemate, answered as nearly to a condition of things in which one monarch retired to an impregnable fortress as to anything else."

Stalemate does indeed have a varied history. But I think that he is right to view stalemate as analogous to Zugzwang.

It is true the capture of the King never occurs in Chess. But checkmate is a loss, and it is illegal to move into check, or remain in check. Thus, except for the stalemate rule, players behave as if Chess were a game in which capturing the opponent's King is the objective. And the rules of that game would have been much simpler to explain to beginners.

Thus, replacing the capture of the King by checkmate is basically a complication added to Chess in order to make the stalemate rule possible. Even if that isn't quite how it happened historically, that's what it seems like conceptually.

But all this doesn't mean that stalemate "should" be a win. As noted, making it a draw forces players to practice accurate endgame technique. As there are cases where players can have enough of an advantage to force stalemate but not checkmate, it might be worthwhile to make stalemate a 3/5-2/5 partial win, but retaining a Pawn instead of having, say, one minor piece left could also be considered a part of accurate endgame technique.

Given that there is a big problem with draws in chess - at least, I think so, because the general public is exposed to chess through the World Championship more than through any other event - a system where stalemate splits the points 60-40, bare king splits them 55-45, and even lowly perpetual check splits the points 51-49, making it a lot harder to achieve a completely dead draw, is, in my opinion, worth trying.

I see it as somewhat analogous to komidashi, which revived Go, even though it sort of achieves the goal the opposite way around.

Why? A bare king might lead to checkmate, so I don't see why in a situation of a bare king the points should be split 55-45.

I didn't want to get too lengthy, so I didn't note that in the case of a bare King, claiming the win is optional, only done if the player baring the opponent's King does not expect to continue on to checkmate, or even stalemate, both of which are worth more.

I wonder, what do you think of the weaker side stalemating the opponent?

Your comment is irrelevant to what I said; the whole discussion is about if stalemate should be accepted as a draw or a win.

Didn't read the whole thread. I think chess would get boring without the intelligent stalemate rule. You could premove many endgames no-brainer-style otherwise.

Your point: "IMO players who vote for stalemate are the big losers because they want a way out to win the game while losing". 

I'm only wondering, if the stalemated side should lose in your opinion only because he was "losing", how do you deal with a position where the stalemated side was "winning"? I'm well aware you are not forced to answer if you don't want, of course.

U still don't get it do u; I'm not talking about someone who is winning or losing, what I meant with losing position is the person who is being forced into a stalemated position, therefore your question is irrelevant. I told this before in the discussion, it's all about perspective and preference, some like the current rule for stalemate more because it opens up a more richer play style while others, like me, prefer a stalemate to be a win instead of a draw, which would be more logical in my opinion because the king has been "captured" and has no way out, this is also the case for other board games like f.e. shogi. FYI, the stalemate rule for chess has been adjusted in history many times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalemate#History_of_the_stalemate_rule

This must have a name, when you point to something said but they keep leading you to something that has been said too, but it's a different matter. Sadly I'm not versed on rethorics. You actually said that it was a way out for the 'losing' side, so I'm naturally curious about your opinion on the 'winning' side being stalemated. But who cares.

And also FYI, one of my previous comments says that both sides of the discussion have their point, I know the rules of Shogi.

If I recall correctly, the rule was purposefully made against the "bad" players, who cannot win with material advantage (e.g. KRN x K). Obviously, people began to force stalemate as a weaker side, and KP x K or KNN x K, the better side has nothing better than to force a stalemate. Despite these positions being common, the rule went along.