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Simply put a "stalemate" in chess occurs"when a player, whos turn it is to move, has no legal moves left to make... this is deemed a draw". We "Anti-Stalematers" would like you to consider a few arguements for why the stalemate rule should be abolished. And then we will provide a simple, elegant alternative solution.
First look at why we should abolish stalemate. First of all stalemate used to be a win, until it was changed to be a draw in the 19th century. Before this standardization, the treatment of stalemate varied widely, including being deemed a win for the stalemating player, a half-win for that player, or a loss for that player; not being permitted; and resulting in the stalemated player missing a turn.
Secondly we must consider the contradictory and obscure nature of the current rules:
You must move when it is your turn, i.e. you cannot "pass" on your move. Even if it will mean suicide you must move if you can. But: if you cannot move, its a draw! This is a contradiction. If you can move in zugzwang you must move, even if it meansa falling on the sword. But if you can't move (which is the highest level of zugzwang) you get out of jail on a free card with a draw.
It is illegal to move into check. Even though a king may be surrounded in aan all-out attack, he sometimes can't be killed because he cant legally step into check. This is like a lawyer arguing a silly legal technicalities to get his defendent off the hook, when everyone knows the logical outcome of the court case.
The whole plan and point of chess is to put an attack on the king. But at some stage the stalemate rule comes along and says: "great, but don't attack the king too well! Be careful to prance around him when you are totally dominating him, otherwise it could easily end in a draw!"
Making a stalemate a win would in no way make endgame play any easier. In fact, it would probably make it harder. It's true that K+P vs K would be easier, but K+R+P vs K+R would be tougher. In general this endgame would still be drawn for most positions that are drawn under the current rules, but make a stalemate a win and a fair percentage of K+R+P vs K+R become winnable. The endgame K+B vs K or K+N vs K would now be winnable in some situations, but not in general – everything would depend on how close the opposing king is to the corner.
Chess is, by nature, already very drawish to begin with. We don't need to give players who have been outplayed cheap tricks to save the game (and produce even more draws).
Capablanca, Reti, Lasker, Nimzowitsch and many other top players have argued for a change as well. I've taught many people chess – they all laugh at the stalemate rule as illogical. Probably you did too, when you first saw it...
Rules change all the time in other games (e.g. the offside in soccer). In chess the stalemate rule was changed many times in the past (see below), so why not do it one more time?
* Some argue that draws by forcing stalemate can be "artistic". Agreed, however, winning by forcing stalemate can also be highly artistic.
Solution: The goal of chess should simply be to capture the king! It should be legal to step into check, after which the opponent would capture the king on the next move and win. This simple change would solve the whole stalemate problem and make the chess rules more logically consistent. It is much more logical, elegant and simple to have the one rule, "capture the king and you win", as opposed to the current definition of mate: "when the king can't legally move without moving into check". Which version sounds more in the spirit of the game?
The stalemate rule has had a convoluted past. For much of the game's history stalemate has not been considered a draw. In the forerunners to modern chess, such as Chaturanga, stalemate was a win for the side administering it. This practice persisted in chess as played in early 15th-century Spain. However, Lucena (c. 1497) treated stalemate as an inferior form of victory, which in games played for money won only half the stake, and this continued to be the case in Spain as late as 1600. The rule in England from about 1600 to 1800 was that stalemate was a loss for the player administering it. That rule disappeared in England before 1820, being replaced by the French and Italian rule that a stalemate was a drawn game.
Assume that Black is stalemated. Throughout history, a stalemate has at various times been:
A win for White – in 10th century Arabia and parts of medieval Europe.
A half-win for White – in a game played for stakes, White would win half the stake (18th century Spain).
A win for Black – in 9th century India, 17th century Russia, on the Central Plain of Europe in the 17th century, and 17th-18th century England. This rule continued to be published in Hoyle's Games Improved as late as 1866.
Not allowed – If White made a move that would stalemate Black, he had to retract it and make a different move (Eastern Asia until the early 20th century). In Hindustani and Parsi chess, two of the three principal forms of chess played in India as of 1913, a player was not allowed to play a move that would stalemate the opponent. The same was true of Burmese chess. Stalemate was not permitted in most of the Eastern Asiatic forms of the game, specifically in Burma, India, Japan, and Siam until early in the 20th century.
The forfeiture of Black's turn to move – in medieval France, although other medieval French sources treat stalemate as a draw.
A draw – This was the rule in 13th century Italy
and was ultimately adopted throughout Europe, but not in England until the
19th century, after being introduced there by Jacob Sarratt.
The first World Championship game to end in stalemate (and at the same time the longest game played in a World Chess Championship final match) was the fifth game of the 1978 World Championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi. The game had been a theoretical draw since move 70. However the players were not on speaking terms, so neither would offer a draw by agreement. Korchnoi said that it gave him pleasure to stalemate Karpov and that it was slightly humiliating.
The second time in history (in our knowledge) that a game for the World Championship was decided by stalemate executed on the board was in the 2007 reunification match between Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik:
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