I’d therefore like to follow up Nigel’s remarks by inviting to a colloquy about the pros and cons of the stalemate rule. Since he has promoted many good ideas – such as critiquing the “football” scoring of three points for a win by pointing out that the victory then goes to the player with the most losses (just as the tie-break rule favoring “most wins with black” similarly favors the player with most losses as White) – I thought his “stalemate = win” campaign was worth some thought. Nigel holds forth for the idea that a stalemate should be scored as a loss for the stalemated player. Those of us who recently enjoyed his online commentary on the Norway Chess 2014 tournament were treated (again) to Nigel’s strongly held opinion about what he might politely call a chess anomaly, or more colloquially “a stupid rule”, namely the rule that scores stalemate as a draw.

I’ve been a fan of the irrepressible English GM Nigel Short for a long time, so when Nigel expresses a forceful opinion about chess I take it seriously.

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Chess stalemate vs checkmate