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Topic: Should "stalemate" be considered a draw?
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In the above scenario, black made the last move.
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Perhaps I should have posted the above position instead.
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The above position is drawn since it is a no-win situation where White is not in check but has no legal moves.
| However, since chess is a bit different, and it is easier to accidentally stalemate someone than checkmate them, I think stalemate should count as a 3/4 win. |
Chess is indeed not "checkers", or draughts. If stalemate were easy to deliver "accidentally" - ie. blunder - then why should it warrant anything better than a draw? According to Wikipedia, 'The rule in England from about 1600 to 1800 was that stalemate was a loss for the player administering it...' 
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According to Wikipedia, stalemate has had many changes throughout history and even in recent times, the standard rules have been questioned.
"The stalemate rule has had a convoluted history (Murray 1913:61). Although today stalemate is universally recognized as a draw, for much of the game's history that has not been the case. In the forerunners to modern chess, such as shatranj, stalemate was a win for the side administering it (Murray 1913:229,267). This practice persisted in chess as played in early 15th-century Spain (Murray 1913:781). However, Lucena (c. 1497) treated stalemate as an inferior form of victory (Murray 1913:461), which in games played for money won only half the stake, and this continued to be the case in Spain as late as 1600 (Murray 1913:833). The rule in England from about 1600 to 1800 was that stalemate was a loss for the player administering it, a rule that the eminent chess historian H. J. R. Murray believes may have been adopted from Russian chess (Murray 1913:60-61,466). That rule disappeared in England before 1820, being replaced by the French and Italian rule that a stalemate was a drawn game (Murray 1913:391).
Wikipedia does not directly say anyone suggested stalemate being a 3/4 win for the player administering it, but the following imply something similar:
"...However, Lucena (c. 1497) treated stalemate as an *inferior* form of victory (Murray 1913:461), which in games played for money won only half the stake..."
"...it was sometimes deemed a win for the stalemating player, a *half-win* for that player, or even a loss for that player..."
Even the writers of the Wikipedia article used the term "half-win," which I used at first instead of the more logical "3/4-win."
A 3/4-win is indeed an *inferior* win, so there is historical justification for my position on stalemate.
Perhaps it is time for us to reconsider the standard view of stalemate and adopt more logical rules regarding it in this new millennium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalemate#CITEREFEvans2007
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To accommodate stalemate being superior, to a straight forward draw a whole new scoring system would have to be put in place.Say 4 for the win,3 for the deliverer of stalemate,2 for the draw and 0 for a loss.Chess is complicated enough, without, what I would consider to be clumsy scoring system.
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