Stalemate rules mean that a player in a heavily disadvantaged position still has the opportunity to play for a draw, whether that comes from their own clever play or a mistake from their opponent (what happened in the comic).
I don’t know anything about chess but I imagine one benefit would be to give the losing player one last opportunity to avoid a loss by being strategic and give the winning player the need to still think about their moves instead of just randomly moving around since they know they will win otherwise.
In theory black could play poorly and give the queen away by placing it next to the white king, then if the white king takes the black queen it would be a draw. Why would black do such a thing? Well playing poorly also means stalemating your opponent in an obviously winning position, which also happened here.
You can argue it’s an “obvious win”, just like I could argue if I’m a piece up it’s an “obvious win” for me. But just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean the result is guaranteed to happen.
Also I guarantee you not everyone can actually checkmate a king with just a queen and king. So in fact it’s not so obvious for a super beginner.
As for the benefits of the actual mechanism itself, in some positions you can actually force a draw or stalemate where you’d either otherwise be losing, or you are unclear of your advantage. For example in one of my games I was chasing the King around with my Rook where if the king took my rook, it would be stalemate, and if they didn’t take my rook I would keep checking the king (while making sure the distance between my rook and their king is 0).
Well as with everything, there is the surface level and the deep rabbit hole. We have only ventured a bit in the rabbit hole. I think enjoyment of chess at any level is possible, but it is definitely not for everyone.
It’s just very amusing from the outside to observe a fervent and dedicated community insisting a thousands of years old game’s wonky design choices make sense for a dozen different reasons. Gamers really never change.
Never liked that rule. The king should be a capturable piece and be allowed to step into checks. It might make the game harder at a beginner level but it gets rid of the anticlimactic stalemates. It won’t get rid of draws because the repetition rule still applies.
Well that’s a fair argument. But I see it as a clever balancing rule.
Technically, if we get rid of the stalemate rule it makes the game harder for the defending (losing) side because it 1. removes an extra defensive resource and 2. forces the defending side to calculate an extra threat.
Now if we think about a theoretical perfect game, black always has a slight disadvantage due to going second. Therefore, in this theoretical game black would always be on the defending (losing) side. If we remove that extra defensive resource black has, which is a stalemate position then white gains an even bigger advantage against black before the game even starts. So in theory if one day chess is solved white might actually win every game.
Of course that’s more of a conjecture on the extreme end but the point is that the stalemate rule is an extra defensive resource that aims to further the hopes of equality for black in my opinion.
Because not all positions are winnable and chess is more about records rather than 1 win or loss. For example 1 person beating another person 1 time is meaningless. 10-3-2 record means something else entirely.
What’s the benefit to the game of this being a draw instead of an obvious loss to white?
“You didn’t win correctly.” - Chess (The original Dark Souls-themed tactical grid-based roguelike war game)
They’ll fix it in chess 2.
Or in one of the paid dlcs.
Na the last patch to chess was 400 years ago. I don’t think it is being actively developed anymore.
They didn’t.
David Sirlin actually made chess 2 years ago, you can go try out its different armies
Stalemate rules mean that a player in a heavily disadvantaged position still has the opportunity to play for a draw, whether that comes from their own clever play or a mistake from their opponent (what happened in the comic).
In a competitive setting, it would mean that both players get 0.5 points instead of white getting 0 and black getting 1 points.
It forces players to focus on the game no matter how much of an advantage they have.
I don’t know anything about chess but I imagine one benefit would be to give the losing player one last opportunity to avoid a loss by being strategic and give the winning player the need to still think about their moves instead of just randomly moving around since they know they will win otherwise.
In theory black could play poorly and give the queen away by placing it next to the white king, then if the white king takes the black queen it would be a draw. Why would black do such a thing? Well playing poorly also means stalemating your opponent in an obviously winning position, which also happened here.
You can argue it’s an “obvious win”, just like I could argue if I’m a piece up it’s an “obvious win” for me. But just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean the result is guaranteed to happen.
Also I guarantee you not everyone can actually checkmate a king with just a queen and king. So in fact it’s not so obvious for a super beginner.
As for the benefits of the actual mechanism itself, in some positions you can actually force a draw or stalemate where you’d either otherwise be losing, or you are unclear of your advantage. For example in one of my games I was chasing the King around with my Rook where if the king took my rook, it would be stalemate, and if they didn’t take my rook I would keep checking the king (while making sure the distance between my rook and their king is 0).
I appreciate all of these super in depth responses, but man does it validate my decision to never invest any time into chess lmao.
Well as with everything, there is the surface level and the deep rabbit hole. We have only ventured a bit in the rabbit hole. I think enjoyment of chess at any level is possible, but it is definitely not for everyone.
It’s just very amusing from the outside to observe a fervent and dedicated community insisting a thousands of years old game’s wonky design choices make sense for a dozen different reasons. Gamers really never change.
I’m not defending the design choice perse, just giving you the things needed to be considered that goes into making such designs.
Never liked that rule. The king should be a capturable piece and be allowed to step into checks. It might make the game harder at a beginner level but it gets rid of the anticlimactic stalemates. It won’t get rid of draws because the repetition rule still applies.
Well that’s a fair argument. But I see it as a clever balancing rule.
Technically, if we get rid of the stalemate rule it makes the game harder for the defending (losing) side because it 1. removes an extra defensive resource and 2. forces the defending side to calculate an extra threat.
Now if we think about a theoretical perfect game, black always has a slight disadvantage due to going second. Therefore, in this theoretical game black would always be on the defending (losing) side. If we remove that extra defensive resource black has, which is a stalemate position then white gains an even bigger advantage against black before the game even starts. So in theory if one day chess is solved white might actually win every game.
Of course that’s more of a conjecture on the extreme end but the point is that the stalemate rule is an extra defensive resource that aims to further the hopes of equality for black in my opinion.
Because not all positions are winnable and chess is more about records rather than 1 win or loss. For example 1 person beating another person 1 time is meaningless. 10-3-2 record means something else entirely.