Stalemate needs to be abolished...

This thread is both bold and beautiful.

This thread's use of ellipses is of biblical proportions.

Highlights (for me):

''Sheepies''

''Idiots''

''Dim-witted-fool'' (only @ Grobe earned that one! :-) #1313

heheheheh....

Do I see a pattern ??

hihihihihi

1. picks a tiny point --- the word "core", ignores the main points..

2. goes off on a tangent ... "Your implication that there's no precedent for splitting the points equally is equally ridiculous" (is this arguement by poetry ? I didnt know that was a thing... word play is the new syllogism ... what precedent are you talking about ?.. never mind dont answer that itll just start you on another tangent... )

3. "all draws be done away with" ... that ones stumped me.

4. goes back to the little point he has cherry picked... "the core rules"
picks his own, to change the subject from stalemate to checkmate heheheh ..continues a different tangent.. Stalemate is not checkmate ergo stalemate doesnt contradict any other rules like a badly tacked on piece of ....... bad rule.

OK I took out the word "core"... lets see what he will pick out this time..

To create an exception rule because a player is about to *violate 2 existing rules* and then *terminate the game so those violations dont happen* and *split the points equally*, if thats not 4 contradictions.... of biblical proportions....... I dont know what is.

What about castling?  It violates the rule that only one peice can be moved per turn.  It also violates the inability for peices other than the knight to jump over other peices.  Say, why can the knight to that anyway?  Seems an odd exception in light of the fact that the general rule is that peices can't jump over each other.  En passant?  Don't get me started -- the rule is that you capture a peice by moving your peice onto one of the squares it occupies?  Except when?  Only on the move imediately after the pawn being captured has advanced two squares?  Oh well, at least we're still capturing diagonally.  Maybe this one will promote -- wait, what's the logic behind that one...?

Ive goto add more to my arsenal. Ive been relying too much on reasoned arguments in a generation of meme spiderman cards.

Fair-enough. Good debate.

As in "I fell victim to the rules I agreed to play under.  I demand they be changed to suit my preference!"

This is again a slight topic change... you refuse to accept stalemate is a big contradiction... anyway, Ive answered all these before...

castling, pawns moving 2 moves at a time are shortcuts for what ppl would do anyway... they are small exception rules which dont interfere with the game in a big way. Also these "exception rules" have "exception rules themselves! " to correct the imbalances they do cause in the game! (IE castling thru check is not allowed! and en passant.. also corrects for the inbalance the "2 pawn moves" creates!). This also shows they are just intended as "shortcuts". Knight jumping is not an excpetion, they can always do that, and there is no rule saying all pieces dont jump.

Also, and this is my main point, none of these rules suddenly turns around 180 degrees and TERMINATES the game! and distributes the points in an unfair way (when there are already 2 existing! more logical rule options already available, especially the clock rule!!), and which has HUGE impacts on endgame theory and significantly aids the weaker player draw more often with stronger players than he should.

As your government appointed lawyer, at this point, I would either advise you to... plead the 5th... or go the "well its an arbritrary rule, it doesnt have to make any sense and its fun!! route)

I`m still awaiting for stalemate haters to refute argument about increasing role of material advantage which will make chess players to play more cautious and will make chess simpler and less spectacular.

Fixed that for ya'.

  Always room to learn.  Can't figure out this stalemate stuff, though.

Monster complaining about cherry picking is hilarious!

He has yet to explain why the person responsible for stalemate shouldn't be punished for it (don't go back to your guffaw-inducing "cornered himself" and "cramped himself" nonsense - you've already admitted (finally!) that the player who delivers stalemate is responsible for it.)

2) He has yet to justify his claim that stalemate forces the player with the stronger position to calculate more than his opponent

3) He has yet to state whether he supports making stalemate +1 automatically or supports permitting the king to move into check and be captured (choosing one would prevent him from sliding back and forth between the two based on flaws cited with his proposed change(s)

4) He has yet to say how draw by three-fold repetition is fair and why he doesn't support changing that rule

5) He has yet to justify his proposal without referring to flaws in the existing rule (but don't you dare justify the current rule by referring to flaws in his proposed new rule.)

6) and on and on and on.

I could probably identify a half-dozen other points posters have made that Monster refuses to address because he can't address them, but it's not worth the effort.

BTW, Monster claiming the current rule amounts to socialism because it props up the losing side has its corollary in Monster's proposed rule, which is like corporate welfare because the player with the stronger position - unable to checkmate and accomplish the game's objective - needs to be propped up by permitting him to leave his opponent without a legal move and, instead of being punished for his carelessness, gets to continue playing (or gets an automatic win.)

Monster's argument fell apart when he finally admitted that the player who delivers stalemate is responsible for it. He just doesn't want to accept the responsibility and instead wants corporate welfare so he can keep playing

Pacifique wrote:

I`m still awaiting for stalemate haters to refute argument about increasing role of material advantage which will make chess players to play more cautious and will make chess simpler and less spectacular.

I don't hate stalemate, I just want it scored or ruled differently. It's certainly part of the game, I just think the scoring rule is a little off.

As to changing the game to more materialistic, well, that *may* be the only good argument I've heard. We'll never know until a lot of people play a lot of games or we put those silicon monsters to the task. Once we analyze that data, then we'll know. If it truly kills the attacking spirit of our holy pursuit, then I will most definitely shut up, regardless of the illogical nature of the current rule.

The argument that it would kill attacking play has been made before and replied to.  Most attackers rely on a forced 3 fold repetition or pepetual check to bail them out if the attack doesn't succeed.  Lasker's idea of dynamic scoring (where exposing the king would be scored .6-.4  and stalemate .8-.2) should encourage attacking chess, since you would have the secondary stratagy of scoring a marginal victory if your attack doesn't produce mate.  I don't hate stalemate, I just think it should be rewarded.   As for saying saying making stalemate a lesser win would simplifying the game.  consider this A king + 1 knight can force a king into stalemate, but it takes considerable skill.  Try it sometime.

Why should failing to accomplish the game's objective be rewarded? Does a baseball team that loses 21-20 get a partial victory because they scored 20 runs?

If the objective of the game were to trap the opponent's king, then stalemate should be rewarded. But it's not - it's to attack the opponent's king so it can't escape attack. And stalemate just doesn't cut it

 Again with the circular reasoning.  If we changed the rules so that stalemate was a secondary objective, you wouldn't be failing to accomplish an objective.    The primary objective of a boxing match is to knock your opponent out, but you can still win if you don't accomplish a knockout. 

Scoring stalemate anything other than 0 or 1/2 just rewards failure.

And the point about the difficulty of accomplishing stalemate with a king and knight - as if that difficulty deserves a reward - is flawed. A beautiful combination that results in checkmate gets scored the same as a simple back-rank mate.

But that's not fair!

So let's set up a scoring system where a win resulting from a beautiful combination gets more than +1. Of course, we'll have to set up a committee to judge each win's difficulty and have an endless debate about who should be on the committee and how to evaluate the difficulty of a win. Then we can all argue about why our win was worthy of 1.4 instead of 1.3.

Then we can claim a conspiracy against us and how the criteria for evaluating a win need to be changed to account for the brilliancy of our wins.

And when people support keeping the existing criteria, we'll say they're "sheeple" who are just devoted to tradition.

And we'll spend - and waste - all this time and energy because we don't feel like doing the hard work of improving at chess and would rather change the rules to cover up our own failures and inadequacies.

I see no reason to reward stalemate either If a player gets himself into a situation, such as certain endings, where mate is impossible because of the stalemate resource - then that was his own fault.  To reward stalemate as some sort of lesser victory seems to me similar in logic to allowing a person with a material advantage a lesser loss when he gets mated. He should have won, but he didn't. Either way the result might have been avoided if different choices had been made during the game. Draw is a built-in resourse to the disadvantaged side, but even draws, whether by 3 fold rep, perp or stalemate (or stalematable situations) require skill, sometimes considerable skill, to acheive.  If the advantaged party can't convert that advantage into a win (a mate, that is), then why should it be treated as a win, or even a modified win.  A draw seems eminently logical to me, just as does a draw on time by insuffient material. Such draws in no way detract from the game of chess. Only grandmaster draws, prearranged draws or intended draws by playing lines know to be drawish, hurt the game.  Whatever Lasker, Capa, whoever thought about chess being played out, was wrong, as nearly a century of great chess has proven and draws aren't a pregame conclusion as they feared.

And what failure or inadequacy was Lasker trying cover up.  He was world champion when he proposed it.

I think you could make a better argument that the people who changed stalemate from a win to a draw were the ones trying to cover up failure.