Stalemate rule needs to be abolished!

"there's no reason to force the reasonable majority to compromise them."

From this thread it is very clear 95% of the ("reasonable")people havent even questioned the rule and are unable to do so! And they dont comprehend our proposal (even though its very simple, just look at the examples and arguements they give).

They are so ingrained/invested in the rule, its like stockholm syndrome, where people are habbituated to a bad environment for a "long time" and start to "like" it.
(again look at the responses they give "ye its flawed, but it makes chess "more complicated "more artful", <insert other nonsense backward rationalization>)

You may be happy... but I contest it is from a certain ignorance. We could add other silly contradictory inelegant rules to chess, and Im sure the majority would be equally as content.

Secondly we are not forcing anyone at gunpoint... we are having a debate.

Will do!
And lets say in 1 years time when FIDE changes the rules so that "our variant" will be the "main chess" rules (if you dont believe it, lets play hypothetical) .....

How would you argue to change it back? What would be your arguement for it?
We have given more than enough for our side of the arguement... all the prostalematers can say is

"its the rule, so its the rule"  -- so what?
"it makes chess more complicated" -- false, check OBITS excellent, well thought out posts
"it makes chess more artistic and lets weaker players escape so it gives them hope" --  I dont even know what to say to this sort of arguement...

Stalemate is a logic derivation from the rules. Abolishing stalemate would mean that other rules would be very different, in order to be logically consistent. Then, the ultimate goal of chess would change from "checkmate the opponent's king" to "capture the opponent's king". This would make all endgame theory and a lot of chess tactics and strategy outdated and irrelevant. Maybe this would even result in a change of the final resolution of chess (maybe the final resolution of chess was a draw by stalemate). I think I'd stay with my "Stalemate Chess" and play with the Pro-Stalematers.

The unique reasonable change I quite liked from here was awarding 3/4 for a stalemate instead of the 1/2, but that would make tournaments very complicated.

With a 3/4-1/4 stalemate, it should be possible to offer one as well, right? Once a K+P v K endgame arises where both players know it's going to be stalemate, it should be possible to just agree to the result without playing it out entirely.

Which leads to an interesting further idea, instead of offering a draw, offer your opponent any fraction of the point; a game could end 0.9-0.1 if both players thought that was an ok deal... Or perhaps that would just make overly short games more common. Anyway it would complicate tournaments even further :-)

I haven't read all 30 pages, due to the length of the discussion and the rude non-thought dismissals (not my style, and not very productive IMO) present in too many of the posts I have read in the first few pages. Kudos to all the posters here who have spoken intelligently and respectfully - again, a must IMO for fruitful discussions/debates/negotiations/etc. - on this subject from either angle.

Just in case it hasn't been put this way somewhere before, I will put it in very simple yet very logical terms that make complete sense from where I sit:

1) A checkmate means that anywhere the king moves next he gets captured.

2) A stalemate also means that anywhere the king moves next he gets captured.

Also, most stalemates are due to one player being completely dominated and "earning" a tie simply due to a single lapse of attention of his/her opponent near the very end of the game. In these cases it is much fairer for the stalemating player to earn a "win" (1 point in most systems), and for the stalemated player to "earn" a loss (or 0 points in most scoring systems).

And from a logical/historical perspective, a king who was completely surrounded and commited suicide instead of being captured would still be considered the loser in any semi-fair historical battle situation, which is analogous to the stalemate situation in chess.

I also like the comment about how this debate would turn out if the rule had been as the OP suggested, namely with a stalemate scoring the same as a checkmate. I have to agree that the mass of debators in such a situation would think the stalemate idea as it stands today was ridiculous and would dismiss it out of hand, much like many on this thread have about the concept of scoring it as a win.

That's a good question. I think if FIDE changes the rules the chess world will be immediately split. There will be 2 governing bodies, 2 championship systems etc. Every decent chess site will support both variants.

I will not argue for one or another because as I said before it's just a question of personal taste (and tradition of couse). I will probably play both variants until deciding if I want to abandon one in favor of another. And then it will be a question of "natual selection" - the variant that will succeed to attract more people will flourish.

However we all know that this will never happen

guys ive updated my very 1st post with a summary of all the anti-stalematers arguements

MwNN: You have my permission to copy/paste my summary above (as with my previous comment as well) into your OP if you so desire, with or without attributation.

It is very sad that anti-stalematers keep repeating same nonsense over and over. Actually there are 2 types of false arguments they use:

• claiming that existing rules are contradictory
• comparing chess to war

And I have to say that stubborn repetition of this nonsense was probably a reason of all those penguins and other pictures we could see here.

There were also few anti-stalemate arguments that I find valid:

• rules will be simplified. I mean proposal of Monster_with_no_Name that declares "capture of king" should be the goal of chess. Well that's simple and consistent and treats checkmate, stalemate and accidentally moving king into check with same one rule. However I find that complexity of existing rules is really the least problem we have in chess.
• abolishing stalemate rule will not decrease complexity and beauty, it will just modify it. That't very interesting point but it needs further investigation.
• abolishing stalemate rule will desrease number of draws. That might be true but I think there are other less radical ways (Sofia rules, scoring system)

The stalemate rule makes perfect sense.  Please stop the drivel. The goal of a chess game is NOT to capture the king.  It is to CHECKMATE the king.  There's a huge difference.  The more you look at that difference, the more logical the stalemate rule becomes.... And as your argument is built on a faulty premise... I say NAY!!!

This is just another false argument, like the ones for the anti-stalematers that uri65 described. Right now the goal of chess is to checkmate the opponent. If the rules were changed, the goal would be to checkmate or stalemate the opponent. That by itself isn't an argument against a change.

I think that the posted history of the rule was the most enlightening thing in this thread -- given that chess has had stalemate as a win, draw, loss or even impossibility, and has had each of them for centuries, shows that it's basically a matter of taste and fashion.

The toughest resistance will probably come from those who have studied endgames for hundreds of hours and would see much of their knowledge go down the drain if stalemate were changed. Also, there really is no pressing need for a change and people don't like change, so people will resist.

And finally, although all different possibilities for what happens in case of stalemate have been tried out in the past, stalemate as a draw has won. We don't know why, but can't rule out that it does in fact make for a better game that way.

I, too, think the current rule is perfectly fine. But this thread has convinced me that it's a matter of taste.

claiming that existing rules are contradictory

Well they are...
rule 1)you *must move* under *all* circumstances... OR resign OR let your clock run out.
rule 2)if you find you have been outplayed and cant even make a move... ok no worries its a draw.

we should apply 1) to stalemate, not make silly addendums like 2)

It is illogical and contradictory when:

if, to a situation, you can apply an existing simple rule (ie rule 1 above), you dont apply it, AND go ahead and create a new rule which is in direct contrast to the first one!

Can you tell me why we cant apply the already established rule 1) to stalemate?
Why do we need to invent new contrary rules to rule 1, when rule 1 can be perfectlyl applied?

comparing chess to war

We dont need to compare chess to war... chess *is* a war...
2 opposing sets of forces compete to achieve their aims... this is the abstract definition of war... just because there is no machine gun fire or cluster bombs doesnt mean its not a war.

Don't be silly, that's not a contradiction. If you have a rule saying that players must make one of their possible legal moves, then you must also have a rule that says what happens if there are no legal moves. The rule says that the result depends on whether you are currently in check or not - you lose if you are, draw if you're not.

You may not like it, but there is absolutely no logical contradiction there. Please stop repeating this silly argument.

I really like this point, kwalloffer. That could probably mean that stalemate rule has won by some kind of "natural selection".

Or equally likely, complete coincedence. Fashion and historical accidents. I was careful to phrase the weakly and would like to keep it that way :-)

guys Ive edited and rewrote my #604
pls re-read it

Did you ever read what was posted on both subjects???

Well I'll try to be patient again: by existing rules stalemate ends the game immidiately. Nobody has to move after that and the closk is irrelevant too. Is it clear enough?

Regarding chess and war I tried to refer you to a dictionary definition of both before. So (with some simplification to save the space):

• chess is a game
• war is a conflict between states OR struggle or competition between opposing forces

There is no way to derive "chess is a war" from these 2 definitions. And if you do you are just unable to make simple logical deduction correctly.