During the endgame, stalemate is a resource that can enable the player with the inferior position to draw the game rather than lose.
[2] In more complex positions, stalemate is much rarer, usually taking the form of a swindle that succeeds only if the superior side is inattentive.
[citation needed] Stalemate is also a common theme in endgame studies and other chess problems.
[3][4] Stalemate has become a widely used metaphor for other situations where there is a conflict or contest between two parties, such as war or political negotiations, and neither side is able to achieve victory, resulting in what is also called an impasse, a deadlock, or a Mexican standoff.
[11] The same position, except shifted to the e-file, occurred in a 2009 game between Gata Kamsky and Vladimir Kramnik.
Stalemates of this sort can often save a player from losing an apparently hopeless position (see Queen versus pawn endgame).
The position in diagram 5 is a special kind of stalemate, in which no move is possible even if one ignores the need to avoid self-check.
Adding a White knight on f2 would produce a checklock: a checkmate position where no moves are possible, even if one ignores the need to avoid self-check.
In general, positions with no moves at all available (even ignoring the need to avoid self-check) are called locks.
[13] In this position from the game Viswanathan Anand–Vladimir Kramnik from the 2007 World Chess Championship,[14] Black played 65...Kxf5, stalemating White.
An intentional stalemate occurred on the 124th move of the fifth game of the 1978 World Championship match between Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov.
[17][18] White's bishop is useless; it cannot defend the queening square at a8 nor attack the black pawn on the light a4-square.
In the game Ossip Bernstein–Vasily Smyslov[21] (first diagram), Black can win by sacrificing the f-pawn and using the king to support the b-pawn.
However, Smyslov thought it was good to advance the b-pawn because he could win the white rook with a skewer if it captured the pawn.
This would normally be a decisive material advantage, but Black could find no way to make progress because of various stalemate resources available to White.
[27] This is typically realized by the inferior side's sacrifice of one or more pieces in order to force stalemate.
The game would inevitably end in a draw by agreement, by threefold repetition, or by an eventual claim under the fifty-move rule.
[31] The position at right occurred in Boris Gelfand–Vladimir Kramnik, 1994 FIDE Candidates match, game 6, in Sanghi Nagar, India.
In Troitsky–Vogt[clarification needed : full name], 1896, the famous endgame study composer Alexey Troitsky pulled off an elegant swindle in actual play.
An example is the "White to Play and Draw" study at right, composed by the American master Frederick Rhine[35] and published in 2006.
Rxb6+ Nxb6+ Moving the king is actually a better try, but the resulting endgame of two knights and a bishop against a rook is a well-established theoretical draw.
(rightmost diagram) Black is three pieces ahead, but if White is allowed to take the bishop, the two knights are insufficient to force checkmate.
[43] (Under the present rules, the game would have ended after 1...Qxf6+, as the position is then dead: no sequence of legal moves leads to either side being checkmated.)
The fastest known game ending in a double stalemate position was discovered by Enzo Minerva and published in the Italian newspaper l'Unità on 14 August 2007: 1.c4 d5 2.Qb3 Bh3 3.gxh3 f5 4.Qxb7 Kf7 5.Qxa7 Kg6 6.f3 c5 7.Qxe7 Rxa2 8.Kf2 Rxb2 9.Qxg7+ Kh5 10.Qxg8 Rxb1 11.Rxb1 Kh4 12.Qxh8 h5 13.Qh6 Bxh6 14.Rxb8 Be3+ 15.dxe3 Qxb8 16.Kg2 Qf4 17.exf4 d4 18.Be3 dxe3.
[48] Lucena (c. 1497), however, treated stalemate as an inferior form of victory;[49] it won only half the stake in games played for money, and this continued to be the case in Spain as late as 1600.
[13] Grandmaster Larry Kaufman writes, "In my view, calling stalemate a draw is totally illogical, since it represents the ultimate zugzwang, where any move would get your king taken".
[76] The British master T. H. Tylor argued in a 1940 article in the British Chess Magazine that the present rule, treating stalemate as a draw, "is without historical foundation and irrational, and primarily responsible for a vast percentage of draws, and hence should be abolished".
Kaufman and correspondence grandmaster Arno Nickel have proposed going even further, and giving only ¼ point as well to the side that brings about a threefold repetition (which likewise has precedents in xiangqi, shogi, and Go).
(The same reduction of draws would occur if stalemate, bare king, and threefold repetition were scored as 1–0 instead of ¾–¼, but the point of the ¾–¼ scoring is to allow the weaker side to still benefit from avoiding checkmate, while giving the stronger side something to play for even when checkmate cannot be attained.
)[80] Jelliss has suggested that under the logic that stalemate should be a win (since any move would get the king taken), checklock should be a draw.