The most common case among beginners. White is a queen up, drives the king into the corner and puts the queen right next to it, feeling one move away from mate.
Note there is no check. Add a check and this would be mate and a win for White. The whole difference is the single square the queen stands on.
Stalemate also happens with a full board, not only against a bare king. If every piece is blocked and the king has nowhere to go, the result is the same:
The condition «no moves left» is the same. What separates them is check.
| Checkmate | Stalemate | |
|---|---|---|
| King in check | yes | no |
| Legal moves | none | none |
| Result | the attacker wins | draw |
| What the players do | the game is over | the game is over |
Here is the same position with the queen one square further along - and it is mate:
How to deliver these mates cleanly without running into stalemate is covered separately: basic checkmates.
It is a fair question: one side has a queen and a rook, the other a bare king, and the game is split down the middle. The reason is that the object of the game is not to capture more material, nor to corner the enemy king, but to deliver checkmate. Checkmate is a check with no defence. With no check there is no mate, however much material is on the board.
There is a practical reason too. Stalemate is the only legal way to save a lost position, and it keeps the game honest to the last move: the stronger side has to finish the job accurately rather than simply accumulate pieces. The rule has changed through history - in eighteenth-century England stalemate was for a time scored as a win for the stalemated side, and some older traditions gave it half a win - but modern FIDE rules are unambiguous: it is a draw.
How the result is recorded and what it gives you in the standings is covered in all the ways a game ends in a draw: besides stalemate that list includes insufficient material, threefold repetition, the fifty-move rule, perpetual check and agreement.
Stalemate nearly always arrives in the same situation: the opponent is down to a bare king and you are in a hurry to finish. Three habits fix that:
The classic pawn trap is worth memorising on its own:
The other side of the coin: if your position is lost, stalemate is a real chance. It only works when you have almost no moves left, so the aim is not to keep pieces but to get rid of them.
Saves like this are a standard theme in chess studies, where White holds a draw from a hopeless position by the only path available.
You have no moves, but you are not in check. The player to move cannot make a single legal move while their king is not under attack. The game ends in a draw straight away.
A draw under FIDE rules, regardless of the material on the board. Even with a queen and a rook against a bare king, the result is half a point each.
Only by the presence of check. In both cases the player has no moves, but in checkmate the king is attacked and in stalemate it is not. Checkmate is a win, stalemate a draw.
No. Stalemate is automatic, exactly like checkmate: the game is over the moment the position appears on the board. Unlike repetition or the fifty-move rule, nothing has to be claimed.
Yes, and it is a legitimate saving technique in a lost position. The usual method is to give away your remaining pieces and steer your own king to a square where it has no moves.
It can. All that is needed is for every one of your pieces to be blocked and the king to have no move that is not into check. Such positions are rare in play but common in composed problems.
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Every kind of draw - draws in chess. Mating technique - basic checkmates. The rules from scratch - rules of chess.
At the board since childhood: hazy about his rating, precise about every rook he has blundered. Counts an evening as a good one if the opponent stayed to talk afterwards instead of rushing off to check with an engine. Message →
