What stalemate is, and how it costs half a point

The player to move has no legal move and is not in check. The game is drawn on the spot, no matter that one side has a queen and the other has nothing. It is the cruellest rule in chess and it is worth understanding properly.

No legal move
Not in check
Half a point each

Two conditions, both required. The player whose turn it is has no legal move of any kind, and that player's king is not in check. If the king were in check it would be checkmate and a win. Because he is not, it is a draw, and both players get half a point.

A queen up, and half a point

Black to move. The king on a8 cannot go to a7, b7 or b8 because the queen on b6 covers all three, and Black owns nothing else. He is not in check. The engine reports zero legal moves, so this is stalemate and the game is a draw.

White was winning by nine points and gets half. That is the whole lesson: material is irrelevant to stalemate. The only thing that counts is whether the side to move has a legal move.

What the same position looks like when it is played properly

The winning version

The queen one square further away, on c6. Now she checks the king and he has two legal moves, a7 and b8. White walks his king up the board and mates in a few more moves. One square of difference between a win and a draw.

The most important stalemate in chess

King and rook pawn, drawn

Black to move. The king cannot take the pawn on a7 because the white king defends it, cannot go to b7 because the white king covers it, and cannot go to b8 because the pawn does. Zero legal moves, no check: drawn.

This is why a rook pawn and a king are so often only a draw. Once the defending king reaches the corner in front of the pawn, there is no way to make progress: every attempt either stalemates him or lets him back into the corner. It is the first endgame result worth knowing by heart, and the opposition page is where the rest of that technique lives.

How to stop giving stalemates away

Count your opponent's legal moves when they are down to a king and nothing else. If the answer is one, be careful. If it is zero and they are not in check, you have just drawn.
Use the king, not just the queen. The standard queen mate is to walk the enemy king to the edge with your queen a knight's move away, then bring your own king up and mate. Chasing with the queen alone is how stalemates happen.
Take everything. A lone king is far easier to stalemate than a king with a pawn, so when you are winning easily, leaving your opponent a harmless pawn is a genuine safety measure.
Give check when in doubt. A position where your opponent is in check cannot be stalemate.

And how to get one when you are losing

From the other side, stalemate is a resource, and a good defender hunts for it. The typical mechanism is to give away everything you still own so that your king has nothing left to move, or to trap your own king in a corner where your opponent's careless queen move takes the last square away. If you are lost anyway, look for it every move: half a point is a lot better than none.

The same instinct is what the defence drills are for, and underpromoting to a rook rather than a queen is often exactly this problem seen from the winning side. See promotion.

Questions people ask

What is stalemate in chess?

It is a position where the player whose turn it is has no legal move available and is not in check. The game ends immediately as a draw, with half a point each, regardless of how much material either side has.

Is stalemate a win or a draw?

A draw, everywhere, under every modern rule set. It has not always been so: in some historical versions of chess stalemate was a win for the stalemating player and in others a loss, but the laws settled on a draw in the nineteenth century.

What is the difference between stalemate and checkmate?

Whether the king is in check. Both are positions where the player to move has no legal move at all. If the king is under attack it is checkmate and a loss; if he is not, it is stalemate and a draw.

How do you avoid stalemate when you are winning?

Bring your king up and use it, keep giving your opponent a legal move until you can mate, and count their moves once they are down to a bare king. If you are promoting a pawn and a new queen would leave them with no moves, promote to a rook instead.

Stalemate sits under How a game ends in the reference. Nearby: