Why stalemate should be a win.

Raging B: Well, yeah, if you see the high percentage of draws at the GM level as the big problem, the best solution by far is to switch to Chess 960 or something roughly equivalent.  It's not a very popular change with club players, but the GMs seem to be in favor of it.  Chess 960 would certainly eliminate the deep opening preparation that is killing chess at the top level.  Take out the memorization and go back to playing chess.   

I don't think the amount of draws or stalemates has much of an effect on how chess is perceived by the general public. I've often heard people say that that's the way it is, but I've never seen any data to suggest that this is actually the case. 

The partial scoring system that was suggested here is absolutely bonkers and would make watching chess games incredibly tedious. A stalemate is NOT between a draw and a win, it's a draw. The game has basically crashed, there's no continuation and there's no mate. 

IF something like .7 points for stalemate was introduced we would end up having an endless number of unnecessarily long, long, long games. An endgame with multiple pawns on the board, but where one side has a very slight, but not decisive, advantage would be played out when both players would normally accept a draw. There are so many endgames where a slight advantage is not enough for the win, but with stalemate a preferable over a draw the side with the tiny advantage will just keep going forever.

Personally, I don't see why a stalemate should be worth more than any other draw. Stalemates usually happen in situations that are dead drawn, usually the king +p vs king. Any rule change seems like it would just be to appease the beginners who still stalemate when mating with the queen and rook. The impressive manouvers where the player who is in the worse position sacrifices his remaining pieces to achieve a stalemate are very rare, but they are definitely impressive enough to be worth that half point. 

If we are going to reward drawn games differently then I would rather see threefold repetitions rewarded over stalemates. Being able to force a repetition is often much more impressive than a stalemate, which is the inevitable result of many drawn endgames. Of course, I don't advocate scoring any draws differently, but this way makes as much sense as any other proposal.  

good point on the repetition. 

It's a rule from the game just like the castle rule is. All other arguments about "logic" are invalid. If you don't like it, go ahead, create your own chess variant.

The fact is: On convencional chess, Stalemate is a draw.

Deal with it! 

The stalemate draw rule makes lots of sense,considering that in some wars,the losing side locks itself inside a fortress.

I think it would be interesting to make stalemating illegal... You'd get positions like this

jposthuma, white just takes the rook resulting in stalemate... Why does white want to lose???

Does not compute. What if all moves in a position result in stalemate. Because stalemate is illegal, the player to play has no move and it is stalemate.

In my "variant", stalemate positions are illegal, so white would not have the otion to take the rook. Colinsual makes an interesting point... well if your only option would be to play into stalemate, I guess you lose!

I agree that putting your opponent into stalemate should be a win.  And I'm surprised at the number of posts saying "It's a rule, that's why", when the argument is about the logic of the rule itself!  Sheesh I'd expect more from chess players.

The rule is perfectly logical. Otherwise it wouldn't work. You just don't like the rule, probably because you feel that it violates the spirit of the game, which has nothing to do with logic.

The vast majority of chess players likes it and thinks that rewriting centuries of endgame theory certainly isn't a good idea.

Should running out of magic cards in your deck be a draw?

As was said many times in the thread already, it's not "perfectly logical" to have a draw when your opponent has the choice between an illegal move (moving king into check) and not being able to play a move.  As has been said many times, the rule of stalemate simply occurs being of the rule of having to 'check' the opponent rather than just flat-out taking the king.

As for my motivation having to do with the spirit of the game, I don't see how that conclusion was drawn.  Maybe you could quote the part where I implied that?

The logic of the rule is that it makes the game more interesting - this is really the only basis for any rule in any game.  Getting rid of stalemate in chess would significantly impoverish the game in my opinon.

And how exactly would you just flat-out take the king without the ability to check?
Isn't that how you attack?
I really don't get people that can't seem to understand:
The kings GET TAKEN.
It's just that we don't play out the very last move.
 

That's an interpretation not fact.  If the object was really to take the king then moving into check wouldn't be illegal.

Stalemate is a win in checkers why shouldn't it be in chess?

Stalemate is a draw in chess why shouldn't it be in checkers?

Interesting, but I do think that moving into check is simply illegal for convenience reasons.
Why would anyone want to just simply walk into check and lose the game on the next turn?
It'd make no sense.
 

My point is that if the object of the game was to take the king then if you allowed your king to be captured it should be a loss.  My interpretation of the way the game is finished is that you have to force the king to surrender, not actually capture him.