Stalemate rule needs to be abolished!

Indeed. There are lots of beautiful stalemate combinations, like this one:

If we were to score a stalemate as 3/4 of a point (1/2 a win) we would retain the artistic stalemate combinations.  You would be fighting for a 1/4 point instead of 1/2 point which could make a difference in a tournament.  It is interesting to me that  that this is the rule Lucena was working under, and  yet his work is relevant today.  We are still taught to aim for the Lucena position in rook endgames.

These points have been made in other posts, but I'll try to rephrase them.  

The objective in chess is to capture the enemy king.  You have achieved this objective when you attain a position where any move made by your opponent cannot prevent the capture of his king next move.  We call this situation "checkmate".  Now, the unique characteristic of stalemate is that the king is not in check, but any move he makes puts him in check.  So, just like checkmate, any move made by your opponent cannot prevent the capture of his king next move.  Basically, this is "checkmate by zugzwang".  It's an artistic and interesting way to force the capture of the king, actually. 

Aside from being illogical, stalemates increase the likelihood of draws, which is a definite problem at the top levels of chess.  People hate ties, regardless of what game they're playing.  When a game ends in a tie, most sports have devised all sorts of contrived ways to break the tie, often with little resemblance to the way to game is usually played: shootouts, sudden death overtimes, you name it.  Even chess has gotten into this, sometimes using blitz games with draw handicap odds to break ties.  Since you don't want ties and don't want to resort to tie-breakers, anything that reduces the likelihood of a draw has to be a good thing.

To address a few other arguments:

(1) Draws by forcing stalemate are artistic.  Agreed, you'd lost them, but you'd pick up wins by forcing stalemate, which can also be pretty artistic.  It's a wash.

(2) Rules in established games should not be changed.  Nonsense - we change rules in sports all the time.  In baseball, for example, when pitchers become dominant, rule changes are made to help the hitters.  So, if your point is that rule changes make a comparison of records from different generations impossible, okay you're right, but all sports have this issue.

(3) Amateurs should learn how to avoid stalemate.  Well, the amateur game is different.  For one thing, amateur tournaments don't suffer from a high percentage of draws.  About the only time stalemate comes into play in a low-level amateur game is when a player up two queens blunders into it.  Stalemate is a nuisance rule at this level - these players have more important things to learn than how to avoid stalemate.

(4) Stalemates simplify endgames.  With a few exceptions, e.g. K+P vs K, this is absolutely not true.  For many endgames, stalemates make drawing technique easier.  Without draws by stalemate, there would be more chances to win, especially in top level games.

Many years ago, I modified a program to generate endgame tablebases, making stalemate a win instead of a draw.  Some of the results changed dramatically.  Of course, all the K+2N vs K endgames turned into wins, but also the number of drawn K+R vs K+RP (a-pawn or h-pawn) dropped by about 30%.  Also, for the "chancellor vs rook" ending, where a chancellor is a piece that combines the moves of a rook and knight, most positions are drawn with the stalemate rule but won without the stalemate rule - it turns out the player with the chancellor can't force a win but can force a stalemate in at most 49 moves!  My computer back then wasn't powerful enough to handle 5-piece endgames, but I've always been curious if K+R+B vs K+R would have a similar result, i.e. K+R+B vs K+R would be winnable without the stalemate rule.

@OBIT: Sudden-death overtime in American football and extra innings in baseball (which you didn't mention) cannot be described as "contrived." They are logical tie-breakers. I agree that shootouts are contrived. I also admit that resorting to handicapped blitz games in chess as a tie-breaking method is awfully artificial, but as far as I have heard and read, lopsided blitz games are only used as a last resort, after many other means of tie-breaking have failed. And how often do those intermediary methods fail to break the ties before necessitating the blitz games? I don't know.

@ this thread...

Who cares?!

Good point.  Stalemate is here to stay, so why make a thread about abolishing it?

I agree; I think stalemate isn't going anywhere. I do think about one thing, though. This site is one of the foremost chess sites on the Internet. With a significant community of chess players here, several of them notables, might this thread generate enough clout and pique enough interest in the issue that it might be raised and seriously considered by the federations? I believe it's still a very long shot, but not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.

If only we had more minds like this in the world... 

I feel sorry that OBITS crystal logic and insightful posts are getting replys like

"its here to stay, why bother arguing about it"

"stalemate is the rule, why do you want to ruin our game" 

etc....

"pearls before swine"  

I DID post the logic behind stalemate being a draw.  I will repeat myself:  The object of chess is to CHECKMATE the king, not to capture it.  If the goal was to capture it, the king would be allowed to move into check.  In stalemate, since the stalemated side has no move, the game can not go on, and neither side has checkmated, or else the game would not have progressed to that point.  Therefore, stalemate is a draw.

your logic is as follows: "its the rule, therefore its logical"

We have a problem with you *RULE* (we are saying the RULE is not logical)
We are suggesting it should be:

Capture the king, game is over (simple)
(also, yes, it is Legal to step into check with this rule)

We are arguing this *RULE* is more *logical* than the existing *RULE*.

We are NOT arguing that "its the rule therefore its not logical" 

If you go back and read my posts and OBITS posts you will see WHY we feel this way

Well, if you want stalemate to be a win, you should invent a chess variant with such a rule.

"Pearls before swine"?! What melodrama! I would hardly consider a proposal to initiate a controversial rule change--however well-thought-out, logical, and compelling--so lofty as to symbolize pearls! (The "swine" portion of that metaphor is even more uncalled-for, but since that's obvious, I won't belabor it.)

I will admit, Monster_with_no_Name, that your arguments for the elimination of stalemate are surprisingly logical and sensible. However, your latest post (#563) failed to contest checkmateibeatu's most recent points (which are also compelling, perhaps even more so).

In that case, the rule you want to change is not stalemate, it the object of the game!

Stalemate is a logical consequence of the current object of the game.

If I get you right, you want to change the following:

"The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king by placing it under threat of capture ("check") which cannot be avoided." -Chess entry on Wikipedia

to

"The object of the game is to capture the opponents king"

I think that's where the two sides are having trouble. Stalemate is perfectly logical and illogical -- depending on which object of the game you use.

Yes. It should be legal to step into check... this would solve contradictions in the current rule set

1) touch move (you touch the king, you cant move it, you have to move something else)

2) you have to move, you cant pass your move

ALso if your surrounded in attack, and the king only can move, he should move and be killed

what did i miss to answer?

because there is nothing to respond to.., pls read  563 more closely and then my other posts here for the WHY we want to change it.

Some of the most impressive draws in the game involve forced stalemates.  Some of the subtleties that make endgames so elegant involve knowing enough to avoid stalemates.  It would be such a shame to rob chess of the beauty of these tactics.