Forced Stalemate

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cnnrcummings
How come the game will force a stalemate sometimes and not others? I played a match earlier and had plenty of pieces and I promoted a pawn to queen. I was two turns from winning. The opponent only had a king. The king had plenty of spaces it could still move. I promoted my pawn by taking a piece, so a capture was recent. Once it was promoted, despite the opponent having room to move their king, it forced a stalemate. Then, I just played a new match. No one took a piece for over 20 turns, they promoted four pawns to queens and I had no other pieces. The game wouldn’t force a stalemate/insufficient material. It makes no sense to me as the first game was easily winnable for me, but then in the second game when the opponent wasn’t doing anything we were able to drag on for over 20 turns and the game wasn’t auto called!
Martin_Stahl
cnnrcummings wrote:
How come the game will force a stalemate sometimes and not others? I played a match earlier and had plenty of pieces and I promoted a pawn to queen. I was two turns from winning. The opponent only had a king. The king had plenty of spaces it could still move. I promoted my pawn by taking a piece, so a capture was recent. Once it was promoted, despite the opponent having room to move their king, it forced a stalemate. Then, I just played a new match. No one took a piece for over 20 turns, they promoted four pawns to queens and I had no other pieces. The game wouldn’t force a stalemate/insufficient material. It makes no sense to me as the first game was easily winnable for me, but then in the second game when the opponent wasn’t doing anything we were able to drag on for over 20 turns and the game wasn’t auto called!

If there's a stalemate, the game immediately ends as a draw.

I a player makes a move and their opponent is not in check and has no legal moves, that's a draw by stalemate.

https://support.chess.com/article/682-what-is-stalemate

Martin_Stahl

In your last draw, instead of promoting your pawn, Qg5 was mate and the same move was available a few moves earlier.