Why does taking away all options for the other player result in a draw?

In Chinese Chess, a stalemate results in the stalemated player losing because naturally, if a king is cornered and has nowhere to go, the king loses. Why does European Chess go against intuition and produce a draw under that circumstance?

Think of it in this way. It's the way I try to to make sense from what on the surface seems senseless, the stalemate.

By taking away all of your opponent's moves while he is not under attack, he cannot make a legal move.  As a result, because he cannot move, you cannot proceed enroute to your victory either because your opponent has to move before you can.

In actuality it makes sense. Not only that, it behooves you to play the the to checkmate right or suffer the "embarrassment" letting your opponent get away if you're on the giving end, and it gives you a sense of relief and accomplishment (fist pump once or twice) if you manage to pull it off on the receiving end. 

I can just imagine irl a king getting trapped in his castle with no troops, surrounded by  the enemy and the enemy just says "Okay, we can't proceed with our move so let's just call it a draw". XD

*Sigh* How the heck do I format this post?

lol. I see that side too.

Chess is a game of war. While we cannot actually fight a war on 64 tiny squares we can symbolize war by the way we move the pieces. Stalemate  symbolizes the siege in warfare. If a city or castle or fort is surrounded by enemy troops and those troops cannot proceed without over running the besieged and it cannot do so, then a state of stalemate is achieved in an actual war. Wars have been fought to a stalemate in actual history with neither side being able to overrun the other side. The War of 1812 and the Korean War are examples of stalemates in history. The stalemate in chess is symbolic of this.  

Yeah but in real wars, stalemates happen when one side still has a considerable force, enough to defend a stronghold. 1 silly king can't exactly hold out against a siege, even with his Royal Guards. 

In Chess, the less troops the defensive side has, the more likely they are to be stalemated. I.e. those games where you would've stalemated if you didn't have those pawns sitting over here.

In real life, the more troops you have, the more likely you are to succesfully defend against a siege. Hell, I would've kept those pawns if to just barricade the doors with where in Chess, I wish they would just kill themselves so I won't have a move to make.

Don't let Chess off just because it's symbolic. The correlation between success and having more or less troops is a biggie.

Modern chess is murder. You have to kill the king for winning.

It should be easy to kill the king when he has no troops and is completely surrounded. That's kinda the point.

I think of it as a punishment for having a huge advantage and making a botch of it.

Also, if the opponent can somehow "force" you to stalemate him, it's his reward.

There are situations "in real life" where odd things happen.  For example, you have me cornered and beat, so as long as I'm king you can do what you want.  But if you kill me, my cousin becomes king and maybe he's powerful enough to bring in an army and make trouble for you...so you let me live and be king.  Such things have happened.

Stalemate is a left-over from the days when the weakest piece was the queen and pawns moved one square at a time.  Checkmates were rare in those days, and stalemates were the common end to a game, and the side with the most material was considered the winner.  With the changes to the queen, bishop, pawns, promotion (queening), and the introduction of castling, the rarity of stalemate was considered a draw--punishment for a poor general who couldn't finish off a helpless enemy.

In the example, I'm still winning and you're getting the short end of the stick.

imagine that in a match you are losing terribly but your opponent makes a blunder and gives such a move that there is no check and you have no legal move then it's a stalemate and you earn 1/2 points than rather a big zero.then it's your advantage

The fact that without it many endgames would be dull and trivial is enough reason to justify the existence of the stalemate rule in my opinion.

exactly. it has nothing to do with logic. this ^^^^^ is the reason

chess isn't meant to be a 100% accurate board game version of warfare

Because if the opponent is stalemated it means you could not think of a way to checkmate him/her. The opponent may have thought that he is not likely to win so he may have figured out a way to get a stalemate instead and you weren’t able to checkmate.

Yes, Chinese chess doesn’t have draws and in it it’s a checkmate for the player who was stalemated. Does it mean that is “better” than the rules in International Chess? No. I don’t think so.

International (standard , “European”) chess has gone through a period in history in which people specifically thought how to make the rules make more sense and were willing to change the rules.

As far as I know the Chinese chess, while also has a bunch of theory developed for it in Vietnam and China didn’t have major rule changes as far as I know.

Another reason may be that in Chinese chess the games are on average much shorter on average. If International chess games can go well over 30 moves , in Chinese it’s on average 20-25 (I don’t remember exactly how many). Chinese chess movement possibility tree is also narrower than that or regular Chess. That means each individual piece has fever move options, and each move changes the course of the game much more significantly. Less room for imperfect moves. I don’t know whether that difference is what justifies absence of stalemate in Chinese chess, but maybe it is.

It's punishment for the incompetence of the player with an advantage. It used to be stalemate resulted in a loss for the player who caused it.