Stalemate is not logical to me

Given at least one player has been denied any legal moves, splitting the point 50/50 seems silly.  I'd split the point 75/25 giving the stronger side the advantage. 

My source of history.. well to begin with im from the country where chess originated. The world's first chess set was arguably from indus valley civilization in 2500 BC. It was found only in the upper citadel where all the nobles lived(evident from the fact that all weaponry and seals have been found from the same place.
The board game was then developed into shatranj, where the modern day queen was actually a wazir(highest official and the mastermind of implementing king's policies), shatranj boards were also clearly very few in number and some had royal seals in it.

If you believe that wazirs and bishops would not be war pieces in a game made in 2500 BC then you are completely fooling yourself.
Wazir is actually the controller of all king's policies, he is given the most power in a royal game as he WAS the most powerful link in the royal chain, he also controlled the army and ordered infantry and cavalry what to do. Every policy basically revolved around the wazir.

Bishops(pandits in the original version of chess) were hugely important at that time, they did a lot of practices which were thought to influence the war's outcome. Various sacrifices and things like ashwemegha yajna etc were done which they believed changed the course of wars. You can consider them as having some magic powers(they were thought to be llike this at that time)

Rooks(chariots) were basically the heavy hitters and were few in number, therefore they are well put in the corner of the board and meant to attack late in the game. Their power increases as the density of battlefield decreases, which is nicely shown in the chess game.

Read more about shatranj, watch a documentary on it and then maybe you will know why the pieces have diff strengths. 

I don't need to read about the game that was a precursor to chess.  It's not modern chess.  Everything post Louis XIV's era or so is a very different game.  Everything that you see today in terms of opening theory, endgame technique, etc. is based on the 1400s era game.

Your wazir argument is not logical.  The wazir would, realistically, be represented by the player themselves, sitting at the board controlling the pieces.  Wazirs did not fly across the battlefield with superior mobility and power (ala the chess queen) directly defeating soldiers facing them.  Likewise, pandits did not directly engage soldiers.  Logically, those "roles" in the game would be more realistic if they affected the game from some external perspective.

The ancient chariot does make sense.  The modern castle/rook does not.

All pointless to discuss, however...which was my point.  Stalemate fills a valid and useful role in the abstract and logical game of modern chess.  Everything you are saying about realism and historical-stick-to-it-tiveness is just twaddle in the end.  Chess is only cosmetically a war game, and the link is entirely tenuous and fanciful.

You cannot kill plastic. Wood and ivory is already dead before it is fashioned into kings and clergy and peons.

In checkmate, the King is being attacked and any move he makes will still result in him being attacked. The key thing is that he is being directly attacked.

In stalemate, the King is not being attacked. So he is not in immediate danger. Yes, if the game were to persist, then he would move into danger. But, the point is that he is currently not being attacked.

Essentially, you cannot commit suicide in chess. Since the rules of chess do not allow you to commit suicide, then the game MUST end in a draw.

  I have always heard that stalemate is a punishment for a player not having enough skill to finish his opponent off. It does allow more excitment in a game where 1 player has an overwhelming material advantage. I like the rule.

Still the point is the same.. draw symbolizes equal strength between opponents, it means neither is more powerful than the other. If one player has 2 queens, 2 rooks and the other just has a king then how is it fair for them to draw?  it is concluded that both are of same strength which is definitely not true. Stalemate draw is a retarded concept without a doubt. You are basically saying that a player who has huge material advantage performed on par with the person who just has the king. It's the most unfair concept in a game ever.

A pawn transforms into a lady by taking five or six steps. Now that's logical in your world? See, there are things in chess that differ from the real world. Sad but true. You'd better get over with it.

Queen us not supposed to be a lady, it's originally a wazir. A rank in the military hierarchy. If a pawn(soldier which can be both male and female btw) does an increadible job of crossing the enemy lines then he would be awarded a rank of his choice. What's so illogical about it?

And if you even talk about chess as solely a game, its still retarded that a player who has 2 queens is considered to have performed at the same level compared to a guy left with just a king in the match. How retarded is that? 

No, the most unfair concept in a game ever is that Britain is the only country/player in Diplomacy that cannot be attacked by land.  But that is neither here nor there.

Your faulty premise is that you are defining a draw to mean that both players are of equal strength.  That is not how it works in chess.  All it means is that a checkmate has not been accomplished by either side...no more, no less.  This can happen in several ways:

- One player can have overwhelming force and play badly resulting in stalemate ;)...in which case they deserve the draw

- One player can force a perpetual check/repetition of moves, often when the other side has superior forces

- Both players can agree neither will likely checkmate and declare a draw (they can also do so for less ethical reasons)

- Both players can run out of material to the point where a draw is forced.

If you cannot checkmate properly with 2 queens, etc. then you are not a decent player or you have blundered badly and you don't deserve the win just because your opponent was a bad a player as you are, but earlier in the game.  Do you also claim that players should win when they are clearly superior players overall but drop their rook by accident in a game?  Same thing.  Allowing stalemate is simply a mistake, just like a poorly considered queen sac.

If in real life each party must make an equal number of moves then it is possible for 10 armed attackers to not kill one if it is not their move.   Chess has a much more ridged framework than brute violence.  If it didn't I would simply punch out my 15 year opponents and scoop up all their pieces as I merrily marched my ELO to 2000+.  Of some importance is not what may 'inevitably' happen but what does happen.  If the 10 attackers simply cannot or do not attack for any number of reasons than they will never be any closer to their aim.  Thus equality is subjective and irrelevant.

Is a surrounded king not a king?  If it isn't what is it?  Shah Mat means the king has died.  If the king is not killed as is the point of the game how does the opponent who just moved claim victory?

A draw does not mean the armies are of equal strength.  In a universal strategic sense a stalemate may be indicative of armies being of equal strength at the decisive point.  i.e. a numerically stronger army may not be able to defeat a weaker army where it must due to some other factor.  Terrain is a common reason but there are dozens of others. 

In chess both armies are equal at a given point.  First time is before the first move.   In a stalemate the point happens to be that the player who must move cannot legally move into check and the player who's waiting cannot legally move as it is not their turn.  Thus the position is equal.

A draw indicates that that situation has not changed enough at the conclusion of the game to be decisive.

I doubt .25 makes any difference.  If the play is worth a quarter point more then why not simply win?  If the player cannot win then why is it worth more than to the other player who cannot win?

For the sake of a quarter point this also makes the game needlessly subjective. 

White to move.  Who is better?

No more or less logical than En Passant.

...which is also completely logical, for the record ;).

Please give us the sequence of moves from here that promotes.  Warning, you run the risk of thinking about the position longer than it took me to create it.

The point is the unequal scoring of a stalemate by a quaterpoint means that someone must now arbitrate the position.  In effect replacing a single rule with potentially hundreds.  Is a quarter point really worth the hassle?

In tournament chess, which is really the only place that anyone keeps scores that matter, do we really need to play out a theoratical draw for another 20 moves in order to get to a stalemate just to record a quarter point?  Judging by the frequency of agreed draws at virtually al levels of chess I doubt anyone wants to bother for +/- .25.

Besides the novice novices is anyone else bothered about stalemates?

Next time you checkmate someone say .. ''Stalemate!!''

stalemate is part of the strategy. it's your job not only to win, but to win without prejudice. The best way to prevent a loss in boxing is a knockout, it sure isn't going all the rounds. Its like that with stalemate too.