Stalemate is the most senseless rule ever

Could you explain that again?

Thank you Batgirl!

In siege warfare, if all the people inside the castle die of starvation, you simply use a ladder, enter the castle and you have won.

No stalemate!

How many draws were there in the last World Championship?  

Was the World Championship a big event to most people?

What major television media covered it?

Where was it your local newspaper?

Magazine?

If one infantry soldier and a King both armed with swords forced another King against the back wall of his castle and the King against the wall couldn't move without being run thru by the infantry soldier who should win?

Chess has evolved over time to become a better game and should continue to do so!

Stalemate is stupid, draws are boring and hurt the popularity of the game.

CHESS NEEDS TO EVOLVE!

Stalemate is something we must understand needs to change!

Draws should be few and far between!!!

The only exception should be when only the 2 Kings are left!!!

Carl von Clausewitz wrote a book about the theory of war in the early nineteenth century. 

A key datum from his work is the idea of the purpose of war. 

Is it to destroy an enemy? To demolish it? - No it isn't. 

It is to force the enemy to have a more amenable attitude. 

The enemy is unreasonable - you want it to be more collaborative. This is the purpose of war. 

How do you achieve it? By overwhelming it. By demonstrating to it that it is helpless against you. 

If chess should be likened to war, it is exactly through this concept by Clausewitz. 

You don't have to KILL the king. You do want to OVERWHELM him. You want to DEMONSTRATE to him that you can do what you want with him. This is how you win a game of chess - and I find this concept quite remarkable. 

The reason for the stalemate is so that karma can pay back players who do this:

One of the high school kids I coached was in the process of humiliating an unrated player who didn't realize he should have resigned. My player decided to Queen as many Pawns as possible before applying checkmate.  I was busy as USCF Tournament Director and didn't realize what my player was doing - until other players called me over to the board.

There sat my player, green in the face as he stared at the board where his six Queens had, as you probably guessed, created a stalemate position.

I told him later he had gotten what he deserved, including a big hit to his rating, and to never do something so mean again!  Fortunately, he never tried that again!

I agree!

For what?  We are apparently in different army camps.

Stalemates and draws are separate things even though stalemates are treated as a draws.  Stalemates form  an integral part of the game without which chess would be diminished and years of theory rendered pointless.  Draws, honorably achieved, are simply one of the three natural outcomes: + - =

Batgirl-For correcting me, by stating the fifth variant of stalemate, over the ages, that I did not include.

The media covered the Fisher/Spassky World Championship like crazy. It was in the paper everyday, on the nightly news, etcetera, etcetera. Fischer was a media Star, but those were different times and a much slower paced world. 

ah... I see. Then you are welcome.

2016 World Championship

12 games

10 draws = BORING

1 win each for Carlsen and Karjakin 

Must go to rapid chess

Can't you see there are problems here?

The game has serious fundamental problems when 10 out of 12 games are draws.

Getting rid of stalemates would likely have little impact on draws at the highest level. Players would stay away from lines that are are endgame draws where the reason is lies in the fact that stalemate is a rule.

There would still be a lot of draws.

It's been mentioned several times in this thread that "changing the rule back" would render several hundreds of years of accumulated endgame theory completely irrelevant. None in the "anti-stalemate" camp has yet to counter, or even address this point.

i completely agree, you said it perfectly.

OP writes:

Yet for some reason, instead of the game being over and the person with more pieces is declared winner by stalemate, the game is considered a draw!!! 

With this reasoning. a player (entirely possible) who is stalemated AND has the most pieces ...Would win !! Brilliant ! So the player who is almost "checkmated" (by the OP's reasoning should lose the game) actually would win because he has more pieces   I'm speechless.

I agree that getting rid of stalemate would have little effect on draws at the GM level. That's why I think a few more rule changes would need to be made. Another rule or two to try and have clear winners in all but a King vs King endgame. Endgame theory from the last 200 years would change! People would have to learn new endgame strategies, but what's wrong with that?

There are 5 ways a chess game is drawn... stalemate being one.

Uthor... writes :

"The game has serious fundamental problems when 10 out of 12 games are draws."

And just what are these fundamental problems?

A draw is THE logical and only result of a well played game by two players.

Rule changes to insure a winner ??? It would no longer be chess in it's present form.

Changing stalemate would have an enormous affect at the top GM level. All pawn endgame theory changes. Therefore large swaths of rook endgame theory change as all transitions to pawn endgames now change. Bishop + wrong rook pawn now just a simple win. I've used that twice OTB to draw.

Gambits virtually eliminated as being up a pawn and trading down is now just a win.

Chess loses huge swathes of its interest as the margin for a win becomes so much larger so good defense just means you lose in 80 instead of 35.

Actually it may be a good thing to get chess players out of the book, they may actually have to learn to use their brains again. Plus the people that write the books will like it because they get to write new and revised books that they can sell to idiots that can't think for themselves.