What is a stalemate in chess?

Question

and, what's the rules of a pawn?? can they only move forward?? What about when they are taking another piece??

Answer 1

a stalemate is when you're possible move is with the king...the pawn is to protect the superiors(wcich are the other pieces)..the pawns move forward and when they take a piece they move diagnolly depends on which side is the oponent piece.

Answer 2

A stalemate occurs when one of the side has some pieces left, but he can't move any of them ( at his turn ). This lead to a draw... so the best side ( the side which has positionnal/material advantage ) must avoir this situation... no one want a draw when they can get a victory.

A draw can occurs on a few others situation too.

-There's not enough material for a checkmate. Let's say the blacks have a king and a knight, and the white only have their king.. there is no checkmate possible with these pieces only. the game is a tie.

-The board present the same situation 3 times. *not necessarily 3 times in a row*. If the board is the same 3 times during the game, "usually" the players are wasting time, it's a tie.

-There is no move from a pawn, and no capture, for 50 moves. Again, the players are usually wasting time, it's a tie.

Now the rules for the pawns..

At their first move, they can move forward 1 or 2 squares.

After that, they only move 1 square. If they refuse to move 2 squares the first time they move, they lose their right. (each pawn play separately, so you can move the pawn A 1 square forward, then the pawn G 2 squares forward..)

But the capture is different. Pawns doesn't capture foward. They capture 1 square away, diagonally. So, if there's a piece in the column, and you can't take it away with another of your piece.. your pawn is stuck there. Sometime this is bad, but... the "move forward/take diagonally" allow you to have great pawn's defense configuration.

Now, there's two other move the pawns can do.

1-taking "en passant". When you move a pawn 2 squares forward ( at the first move of this pawn ), if you end up just at the left or the right of an ennemy pawn, he can take you by moving diagonally.

Example : You move your pawn from b2 to b4. The blacks have a pawn on c4 ( just at your right ). If they want, they can take your pawn by moving their pawn on b3.

The explanation is that they take it just they would do it if you only did move 1 square forward.

BUT they have only one chance to do it. If they choose to make another move ( with another piece ), they can't take this pawn like, 3 turns later.. it's now, or never.

Finally, the promotions. When a pawn get on the 8th row ( row "8" for the whites, row "1" for the blacks ), they can promote. You remove the pawn from the board, and you put in another piece (knight, rook, queen, bishop, NO KING ) to remplace it. 99.9% of the times, the queen is the obvious choice. But there's a few rare situation where it is not. ( example : if you take a queen, the blacks are stale-mate... but if you take a rook, you can checkmate them in 2 moves... things like that ).

Note : The beginners often make a mistake with promotions... the piece you change your pawn to must NOT have been taken yet.

You must not wait to lose your queen, to promote a pawn to queen. You can promote all your 8 pawns to queen, and have 9 queens on the board ( including your starting queen ), and the black can have 9 too.

That's about it! : )

Answer 3

Some people answered this incorrectly.

Stalemate is when its a player's turn to move and they are not in check but have NO legal moves - probably because moving would place them in check. Often a danger when you're attacking the enemy with lots of powerful pieces and they don't have much material left.

Pawns can move 1 or 2 squares on their starting move only. After that they can move one square forward or capture on the two forward diagonal squares - not directly in front.

http://www.chesstactics.org/

Answer 4

when both sides can no longer make a viable move... and it is pointless to wait for time to run out.

Answer 5

Stale mate is a type of draw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalemate

Pawns and other moves

http://www.chesssetguide.com/playing.htm...

or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#Rules

Answer 6

A stalemate is when both players have a king, and only a king left. In this case neither can win as a king can't put another king in check. Pawns can only move forwards except when capturing-then they move one space diagonally. On their first move pawns can move forwards two spaces. When a pawn reaches the other side of the board it can be exchanged for a different piece, and then has the abilities of that piece.

Answer 7

A stale mate is when the only possible move is when you can move the King but all the squares it can move to are in check. The game is a draw.

Yes, the pawn can only move forward. They attack diagonally and if they reach the end of the board, you can promote them to any piece you want!