FIDE LAWS of CHESS
Article 5: The completion of the game
5.2 a. The game is drawn when the player to move has no legal move and his king is not in
check. The game is said to end in ‘stalemate’. This immediately ends the game,
provided that the move producing the stalemate position was legal.
Former World Champion Emanuel Lasker proposed a rules change to a 10 point system:
checkmate = 10-0
stalemate = 8-2
perpetual check = 6-4
draw by 3 fold repetition, 50 move rule, or mutual agreement = 5-5
@tpr sounds interesting. Where can I read about it?
I read about it in Bronstein's book "200 Open Games", I did not retrieve the original writing by Lasker.
Stalemate is possible with solus rex vs king and knight when even helpmate would be impossible. So a draw is the only fair result, unless you are going to rank different kinds of stalemate, which is inelegant.
Keeping the king alive is dangerous. The king must be beheaded!
There is good reason for why stalemate is not a win - a good chess player must know checkmating patterns, not stalemating patterns. It makes chess too easy if you need only stalemate to win. If someone has a decisive advantage of a bishop in the opening and in the endgame that person simplifies it to K+B v/s K, then clearly that persom sucks. With stalemate being counted as a draw, chess playera have to find ways to actually use a decisive advantage, rather than simplify to win (because stalemate is possible in K+B v/s K).
The chess rules have been finetuned over centuries. I think, we can conclude that simple changes like this one would not improve the game.
The rule change Lasker proposed was to counter the tendency of ever more draws.
We see that today even more: classical chess world championship 12 draws in 12 games.
In the TCEC top chess engine championship they now play the superfinal with mandatory opeings preselected to create some imbalance.
They did the same in checkers, when the high number of draws lead them to mandatory openings for some imbalance.
In te Carlsen invitational they play a rapid game and a win gets 3-0 points. If it is a draw, then an armageddon blitz game decides, but the winner gets 2-1.
I think stalemate should win ( FIDE rules:stalemate is draw)
at some positions example you have only king ( or pawn but can't move ) but can't move because opponent can take your king ( you can win rook pawn endgames with only king( not FIDE rules) )
but ıf you can't move any piece it's should be draw
