Stalemate Explained: How It Differs from Checkmate and What to Watch in the Endgame

Sometimes you chase the enemy king into a corner and the game still ends in a draw. You were far ahead in material, and mate was only a few moves away. That is stalemate. I think almost every beginner runs into it at least once.

This post covers the definition of stalemate, how it differs from checkmate, the typical endings where a winning player stalemates by accident, and a simple check that prevents it. For the rules I used the FIDE Laws of Chess.

What stalemate is

Under the FIDE Laws, the game is drawn when the player to move has no legal move and their king is not in check. The game ends the moment the stalemate position appears.

There are two conditions. The first is that there is no legal move at all. That means no move for the king, and no move for any pawn or other piece either. The second is that the king is not in check.

In chess you cannot pass. If you have a legal move, you must play one, even if it hurts you. Stalemate is what happens when that rule meets the other rule, that a king may never move onto an attacked square.

How it differs from checkmate

Checkmate and stalemate are both positions where the side to move has no legal move. The only difference is check.

• Checkmate: the king is in check and there is no way out. The side giving check wins.
• Stalemate: the king is not in check, but there is no legal move. The game is a draw.

Here are two small positions I set up to compare them.

Position A: Black has only a king on a8. White has a queen on b6 and a king on e1. Black to move.

The black king could go to a7, b7 or b8, but the queen on b6 covers all three. The queen does not attack a8 itself. Black has no legal move and is not in check, so it is stalemate and a draw.

Position B: Black has only a king on a8. White has a queen on b7 and a king on b6.

Now the queen gives check on a8. Black would like to take the queen, but the white king on b6 protects b7. The queen also covers a7 and b8. There is no way out of check, so this is checkmate.

The two positions differ by one square of the queen and by whether the white king is nearby. That is how close a win and a draw can be.

The typical queen ending

I think stalemate happens most often when you have a king and queen against a lone king. The queen covers so many squares that, while you take away the king’s room, you can easily take away the last square too.

Position A is the classic case. With the king in the corner, a queen a knight’s jump away (b6 or c7 against a king on a8) leaves it no moves. If you remember to be careful whenever your queen lands a knight’s move from a cornered king, you will avoid most of these.

The cure is not to finish with the queen alone. Once the queen has pushed the king to the edge, stop chasing and bring your own king closer. Leave the enemy king one or two squares to shuffle between on the edge. Give the final check only when your king is close enough to help. Position B is where that process ends.

Pawn endings and promotion

Stalemate is also common in king and pawn against king.

Position C: White king on c6, white pawn on c7. Black king on c8. Black to move.

The black king’s possible squares are b7, d7, b8 and d8. The white king covers b7 and d7, and the pawn on c7 covers b8 and d8. The black king on c8, in front of the pawn, is not in check. This is stalemate as well. White’s move bringing the king to c6 threw away the win.

When a pawn promotes, a new queen can sometimes leave the opponent with no moves while a rook would win. In the famous Saavedra position, promoting to a queen walks into a stalemate trick, and promoting to a rook is the winning move (see Saavedra position on Wikipedia). The queen is not always the right promotion.

One more thing: watch the opponent’s pawns. If a pawn can still move, it is not stalemate even if the king is stuck. But if the pawns are blocked, the position becomes stalemate as soon as the king runs out of squares. It helps to check, once, whether the opponent’s pawns can really move.

A check before you move

When the opponent has few pieces left, I recommend asking two questions before each move.

1. After this move, how many squares does the enemy king have? If the answer is zero, check whether it is in check. If not, it is stalemate.
2. Does the opponent have any other piece that can move? Look at whether a pawn can advance and whether any other piece has a legal move.

For the winning side, stalemate is what you get when you leave the opponent nothing to do. Until you deliver mate, leave the enemy king a square to move to. I believe a large part of endgame technique comes down to this one point.

Stalemate from the losing side

For the side that is losing, stalemate is an important way to save the game. In tournaments a win is usually worth 1 point and a draw 0.5, so turning a loss into a draw earns half a point.

A common idea for the losing side is to get rid of all their pieces and leave a king that cannot move. By letting the opponent capture the last pieces, they run out of legal moves. For the winning side, a free capture can be the trap. The two questions above are worth asking before you capture too.

Shogi has no stalemate

Shogi has no draw rule that corresponds to stalemate. Because captured pieces can be dropped back onto the board, a position with no legal move at all almost never happens in a real game. In the Japan Shogi Association’s rules, the cases with no result are repetition (sennichite) and impasse (jishogi), and both are normally replayed.

In tsume shogi the attacker must give check on every move, so the situation “not in check but unable to move” never arises. Players coming from shogi are often surprised that a quiet move, one that is not a check, can solve a chess mate puzzle. That quiet move is also the kind of move that carries the risk of stalemate.

Getting used to stalemate with mate puzzles

Chess365 is a checkmate puzzle app with 1,000 puzzles each of mate in 2, 3, 4 and 5. You always play White and can make any legal move. You can also play a move that stalemates Black, but that line counts as a failure, and instead of the usual failure message the app shows “Stalemate” with “Black has no legal move but is not in check: that is a draw. Try the line again from the start.” It uses up one retry, like any other failure. The How to Play screens also explain, with a diagram, that stalemate is a draw and not a win.

Many solutions are quiet moves, so you can practise, a little each day, the feel of closing in on the king while leaving it a square. How to start with mate puzzles is in Chess checkmate puzzles for beginners, material and trades are in Chess piece values, and how to use the app is in Getting Started with Chess365.