Confused by automatic stalemate

Just curious if anyone can explain why a stalemate happens when there are still plenty of opportunities for a player to win the game.

Allowing a stalemate would be a blunder by the player who has "plenty of opportunities" to win.

For example in the position
8/5P1k/5K2/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1
the hasty f8=Q stalemate would be a terrible blunder when there are several winning moves available.

Did you mean something different?

A stalemate is when the losing side has no legal moves to play and as this is against chess rules the game ends in draw.

i am assuming you were talking about this game:

the stalemate happened because black has no legal moves. the pawn cannot move because it is blocked by the king. the king cannot move to the a-file because of the rook on a1, cannot move to the 2nd rank because of the queen on f2, cannot go to c3 because of the knight on b1, cannot go to c4 because of the bishop on f1, and finally cannot go to b4 because one cannot take one's own pieces and the square is covered by several white pieces anyway. black does not have a single move, but is not in check. it's a stalemate.

The usual reason a stalemate occurs, when large material advantage should have provided an easy win, is that the stronger side gets careless.

In the game highlighted above, White just kept taking irrelevant material, instead of concentrating on the king hunt. No thought went into the consequences of the captures running out.

Thank you so much for all the detailed responses. I’m still relatively new to this game and was obviously quite confused. I now understand thanks to everyone’s responses. Thank you again.

For more information, a stalemate occurs when the opponent has ran out of moves. Even though You've noticed several opportunities to successfully checkmate your opponent, your opponent has nowhere to move his pieces, either the spaces for his king are all blocked by check. I hope this helps!

I find this stalemate thing very suspiscious... if I have enough pieces to win why should some computer automatically call it a draw??

@Katoh1 said in #8:

I find this stalemate thing very suspiscious... if I have enough pieces to win why should some computer automatically call it a draw??

Not sure if trolling, but anyway: It's not "some computer" that arbitrarily decides what is and isn't a stalemate. It's the rules of the game. And the rules say: A player must make a move when it's their turn. If they can't make a move (and are not in check), it's a stalemate. Don't really understand what's "suspicious" about that. I think it adds to the game, it's like an additional game mechanic that makes endgames more interesting. Also, it allows the concept of Zugzwang, which also is a game mechanic that makes the whole game more interesting and fun.

@LokiBrot said in #9:

[...]Also, it allows the concept of Zugzwang, which also is a game mechanic that makes the whole game more interesting and fun.

The rest of your posting resonates with me, especially the part about making endgames more interesting. Endgames would indeed me trivialised without the stalemate rule.

But what is the connection between stalemate and zugzwang? I don't understand that.