Stalemate needs to be abolished...

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.

A player who plays perfectly by definition will be able to checkmate his opponent, unless his opponent also plays perfectly, in which case the result is a draw

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.

I guess you'd have to define what you mean by slightly less than perfectly - if both white and black play perfectly, my belief is the game would be drawn but I could see the argument that white would win since white starts out with a slight advantage and would maintain that advantage with perfect play by both sides. It's why annotators speak of black equalizing in the opening after good play by black and less-than-good play by white.

Would probably be better if you could post a diagram to show what you're referring to. Then we'd know the advantage you're referring to where one side played perfectly and the other slightly less than perfectly.

Scoring stalemate anything other than 0 or 1/2 just rewards failure.
Stop machine gun fire posting... listen to what people are saying and most important.. think!
If stalemate is a secondary objective, as blake just told you, then its not failure.

And the point about the difficulty of accomplishing stalemate with a king and knight - as if that difficulty deserves a reward - is flawed. This is the same type of guy who will argue stalemate traps are buuudiiifulll, and thats why it should be a draw (reward). 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.  Who are you and what has the PawnPromoter done to you ??

But passing your turn because you cant move should be "no ones fault".. its not so much about "rewarding the other guy"... as it is about "punishing this guy breaking the rules" .. 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, I love this... for the entire duration your like a history channel chearleader... all your arguements were based on history this history that, posting articles, quotes, referencing who said what, always deferring to these "intellectual giants" of history as authority........ now you turn around in a second and rubbish them... as nearly a century of great chess has proven and draws aren't a pregame conclusion as they feared.

Your boxing match analogy is flawed because an outside element (the referee) steps in to stop the fight between the two opponents. Actually its perfect... the stalemate rule "steps in" to "stop the fight" right before one of the players is about to violate 2 rules and calls it a draw

You can win aside from checkmate too - if the tournament director or an arbiter steps in (same role as the referee) and declares the game over due to a rule violation such as your cell phone going off.

Your boxing analogy also is flawed because the fight is stopped based on concerns about the opponent's health - not because he was punched too many times but is otherwise coherent, lucid and fine

In Monster's defense, it's understandable that he can't keep up with this thread.  I don't envy his position.  He has burdened himself with the impossible task of trying to prove that his system is objectively better than the one currently in place when in fact the two systems just create different, yet functioning games that cater to different tastes.  He's basically comparing apples to oranges, and reasoning that apples should taste like oranges because he believes oranges taste better than apples.

 Im good at picking up patterns... and this one is yours... we've come full circle again. We always (with you) start with the bold part above, then over many posts thrash out all the details and implications, rule contradictions, negative effects on endgames, giving more burdens to stronger players etc, once you've lost each of these battles ... its back to the bold part above. Its like an arcade game, put in 20c and try again from the first level... which is fine, as long as you try diferent approaches from here...

As you've already stated, if Monster has failed to reply to any posts directed at him, you might as well take it for what it is:  he failed to come up with the appropriate rebuttal against what was said. Not so... After all the pompous comments he's thrown around in the thread, he certainly won't be the one to admit when he's wrong.  He'll just keep silent.

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.