Talk:Stalemate

Some citation needed flags.

(a) To the sentence, "In more complex positions, stalemate is much rarer, usually taking the form of a swindle that succeeds only if the superior side is inattentive." Obviously needs one. Don't know the status in terms of truth, suspect no survey has ever been undertaken. (b) To the sentence, "Some regional chess variants have not allowed a player to play a stalemating move.". Obviously needs one and seems improbable. What would happen in this White to play position for example? Or would Black's last move count as stalemate itself, in which case how far might you need to look ahead to determine if a move was not allowed?

Regional chess variant.

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

White to play, what to do?

(c) To several sentences in the double stalemate section. (No sources given.)

Well, according to FIDE rules, this is already a dead position and the game is over, since no sequence of legal moves leads to checkmate. The position might have been killed by Black if we retract 0.a6–a7+ Kb8–a8 (in which 0...Kb8–c8 or 0...Kb8–c7 would have been possible and kept the game alive). Double sharp (talk) 09:57, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

"Steelmate" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Steelmate has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 March 24 § Steelmate until a consensus is reached. Rusalkii (talk) 21:43, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Stalemate and shogi

I thknk this edit made in January 2019 needs to be discussed with respect to shogi and stalemate because the latter is so much a near impossible occurance that the there is no mention of the possibility happening in any of the rules of shogi that I've ever come across. It's theoretically possible perhaps to set up a stalemate position in shogi (there are some examples given in the Japanese Wikipedia article about "stalemate"), but getting to that point would almost certainly never happen in an actual game unless both players were essentially making nonsense moves. Moreover, the source cited by the 2019 edit in support of shogi and stalemate is nothing more than a user-generated website whose primary purpose seems to be to sell shogi sets and other merchandise: I wouldn't really consider this site to be a reliable source for anything related to shogi. The site has a very simplified version of shogi's rules that most likely just regurgitates content found elsewhere, and simply states "the opponents agree on a stalemate (draw)" with respect to shogi and stalement, which is odd because there aren't really agreed upon draws in regular shogi. The current wording makes it seem (at least per my reading) that this a viable outcome, even if it's an extremely rare one, but I think that even goes too far. -- Marchjuly (talk) 15:54, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: You certainly have better Japanese than I do, but doesn't ref [3] in the jawiki article point to an actual game with such an ending (from computer shogi), if I am not mistaken? At least, copying and pasting the CSA into lishogi precisely shows that it ends in a stalemate position. Double sharp (talk) 16:49, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

The Ref 3 your referring to cites the score of an actual game played in the 2014 betwen two computers at the 24th World Computer Shogi Championships, but the game bascially devolved to a position where the utimately losing side had just its king left and couldn't make a legal move; so, the final result end being "loss by legal move". The game was played in the first preliminary round by the programs "Katsudon Shogi" and "libshogi" and was won by libshogi. From the description of the game on Japanese Wikipedia and from looking at the actual game score itself which is cited by Japanese Wikipedia, Katsudon Shogi started just moving/dropping pieces on squares where they could be taken for free around move 54, and this lasted until about move 109 when libshogi had captured all of Katsudon Shogi's pieces. There were several times from move 54 onward where libshogi actually could've mated with its next move but instead made another material-grab move. My guess is that these were two fairly weak programs; they finished 20th and 22nd out a field of 22 programs in that round. For some reason libshogi couldn't figure out how to mate and just continued making material grabbing moves that increased/maintained its numerical advantage, while Katsudon Shogi probably calculated it had lost but just kept making moves for the sake of making moves to extend the game one more move. The programers most likely just let things play out as long as possible just to see what was going to happen while looking for bugs or until the game reached whatever number of moves per game had been set as the limit by the tournament's organizers. The game eventually reached a position where Katsudon Shogi had no legal move it could make with its king; an illegal move is, in principle, an automatic loss in shogi so the game ended as a win for libshogi. Calling this kind of thing a "stalemate" seems contrary to how the term is used in chess, and probably just an attempt to define the situation in some way. Unlike chess where you can find statemate occuring in actual game play (even at the highest level), this kind of result almost certainly would never happen in a casual game between two human players unless they were just making moves for the sake of making moves, and it could never happen in a competitive game where winning/losing really mattered. So, that's what I mean by being a theoretical possiblity perhaps but also being something with zero chance of ever happening in game play. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:57, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: But that's not actually contrary to the chess meaning, is it? In chess you are simply stalemated if you have no legal move and are not in check. If illegal moves are an automatic loss in shogi, then clearly legalistically stalemate is a loss.

Yes, it's true that this would never happen between human players, but chess also has construction tasks in problems that would never happen IRL (e.g. how many consecutive checks can you contrive in a position?). Clearly this is about how it is here.

Looking at this situation, I think the easiest way to describe it is: stalemate in shogi essentially does not happen in serious play (because of the drop rule), but since an illegal move forfeits the game, theoretically it would be a loss for the stalemated player. Double sharp (talk) 03:38, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Okay, I rephrased the entry. Double sharp (talk) 03:49, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

"Stalement" is an actual term/concept defined in what would be considered the official rules of chess and other chess-related publications that would be considered reliable sources for Wikipedia's purposes regarding chess. I don't think the same can be said for shogi; so, it's basically an attempt to describe a situation using terminolgy used in chess to shogi that to me is nothing but original research or synthesis of reliable sources. If there was some type of reliable source (ideally a Japanese language source) which describes the situation being discussed here as stalemate or uses the Japanese term "ステイルメート" to describe such a situation, then perhaps that could be seen as something that could be verifiable; however, I'm not aware of any such source. The Japanese Wikipedia itself isn't a reliable source for Wikipedia's purposes, and the section on shogi in the Japanese Wikipedia has been tagged for being unveriable due to alack of citations to reliable sources since September 2014. The website cited for stalemate regarding shogi in thie article is a user-generated site that doesn't meet (at least in my opinion) Wikipedia's definition of a reliable source. So, basically the claim as presented even after your revision, is an unsupported interpretation that treats stalemate as an outcome of shogi (even a theorectical outcome) that's not supported by reliable sources in any way. Citing the game score from the game mentioned above found on Japanese Wikipedia only works if you say the result was a loss by "illegal move"; there's no mention of stalemate ("ステイルメート") in the score itself; so, once gain this is one of use applying a well-known chess term to a situation that's not used by reliable sources regarding shogi, i.e. WP:NOR or WP:SYN. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:17, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Then I disagree. To me "stalemate" is simply, in chess, a synonym of "a position where the player to move has no legal move and is not in check". This situation, we agree, can arise in shogi. If simply substituting the definition of a term is original research, then you would hardly be able to write anything... Double sharp (talk) 07:21, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

But if saying "stalemate" is the problem, then I have rephrased it once more to make the implication even more implicit: In shogi (Japanese chess), illegal moves result in losing the game. Thus a position with no legal moves results in a loss, as occurred in the 24th World Computer Shogi Championship. Double sharp (talk) 07:30, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Stalemate = Checkmate

Those who say that a stalemate is not a loss equivalent to checkmate have forgotten why a checkmate is a loss in the first place. A checkmate is a loss because no matter what move the checkmated side makes, its King will be captured as a response. So instead of playing out the formal capture, the game ends once the inevitability of that capture is established.

And the inevitability of the King’s capture is just the same for a stalemate as for a checkmate. Now it’s true that the stalemated side doesn’t have to parry a check because there is no check...but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to do anything, because it does...it has to move. Not moving forfeits the game, because it breaks a fundamental rule, that of alternate moves by the two sides.

Obviously a rule can arbitrarily override the logic of the game as determined by other rules, and that’s what the current stalemate rule does, bearing in mind it wasn’t always that way.

Of course, this analysis does not specifically consider the so-called Smothered Stalemate, where a side has no moves, either legal or illegal...put another way, even if moving into check were legal, the side cannot move. But this is simply an extreme case of failure to move. ~2026-53620-5 (talk) 15:02, 2 April 2026 (UTC)