How many moves to stalemate

Is it true? Stalemate is when one player has no legal move but is not in check. When it occurs, the game result is a draw. I guess your opponent made up this "rule" out of the really existing move rule - after 50 moves without a piece captured or a pawn moved, the game can be claimed a draw.

But if he captured the pawn, the counter would start from 0 again so there is no such rule. Your opponent was just making something up cause he didn't want to lose. That endgame is insanely easy to win. Just sac a bishop or knight for the pawn, win with the rook, game over although he should have resigned immediately in such a position anyways. It gets worse later on as you get better too. You may end up playing games that are equal at around pm and end up blundering cause your tired White Promotes to a Queen, and what does Black do?

Capture it, of course. Can either team with just a King? No way! This is just one example of the Stalemate called Insufficient Material. You need to have enough firepower on the board to both check the King and at the same time make sure he has no way to escape. The fewest pieces possible to do this are a King and a Rook. Call it a draw and move on with your day. If we look at all black's options in the above example, we'll find that every square he can move to is attacked by the queen!

Black has no possible legal moves, and so the game is declared a draw. In the image below, all the squares attacked by the queen are marked in red. You can see that black has nowhere to go! Stalemate can also happen with a lot more pieces on the board. Let's take a look at a more complicated stalemate. Again, it's black's turn. Tony has already answered the second question - it could legally be thousands of moves depending on the position. As long as the same position is not reached more than twice and there is no 50 move stretch without a pawn move or capture, the game can go on until there are no pieces left.

Theoretically, if you have lost all your pieces and he has lost none of his, he could jockey pieces around making sure not to allow the same position three times while every 50 moves moving a pawn or forcing you to capture a piece. However, this scenario is extremely improbable, as a quicker mate would certainly be preferred.

As to the first question, if you only have a king, and your opponent has sufficient material to force mate, the minimum necessary number of moves in all positions would be 33 - in the case of King, Bishop, and Knight against King.

In other cases, mate could be forced sooner. See Wikipedia again for a table: a queen takes at most 10 moves to mate with best play, a rook takes at most 16, two bishops 19, and bishop and knight as mentioned These are the only entries in the table with the opposing king as the sole defender. Any other pieces or pawns added would reduce the necessary number of moves. Depends on where the game is played. USCF forces games to end at moves, so if your opponent leaves you with a lone king on move , he has 1 move to checkmate you before it's a draw.

Also other federations and tournaments allow rules where after a certain period of time not moves the game goes to adjudication. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.