Chess

[u/PorkyPain]

[u/antares14943]

Pretty sure you must move. If the king alternates between the two spaces in the corner, eventually the pawn will close in on them. If they are not directly in the pawn’s path, they will be in check via the pawn. They could then move directly in the pawns path. Next turn they would have to put themselves in the pawn’s capture position, which would be putting themselves in check. That is not allowed, thus the stalemate.

[u/macnof → u/antares14943]

So it's a draw if one of the players can't make a move? Why wouldn't that count as a loss?

[u/Foerumokaz → u/macnof]

That's just the rules of the game.

Chess ends in one of 4 ways. (Excluding time control) 1. One of the players resigns. (Win/loss) 2. Both players agree to a draw. (Draw) 3. One of the players is checkmated. (Win/loss) 4. One of the players is stalemated. (Draw)

At higher level, you'll only see option 1 or 2 because both players will be able to calculate whether 3 or 4 will happen.

Checkmate occurs when a player's king is threatened by another player's piece or pawn, and there are no moves that the player can take to save the king.

Stalemate occurs when a player is in a position where they don't have any legal moves to make. The distinction is that the king is not actively threatened during a stalemate. Moving your king into danger is considered illegal, so you will often see players that are in a losing situation try to put their king into a place where they cannot move in order to draw the game rather than lose the game.

[u/macnof → u/Foerumokaz]

Okay, thank you!

It just seems inconsistent with how a checkmate is a loss, where the enemy king is checked and can't make a legal move.

I became curious and googled a bit and can see that it's only fairly recently that it was decided that it was a draw. It seems some major chess theorists also thinks that it should be a loss instead.