Draw? Really?

Hi all!

I finally did great against this 1500 bot. I was ahead all game. (I swear the better you do, even 1500 rated bots crank up their ability if they are losing, it's feels pretty obvious--even computers don't want to lose).

I ended up promoting THREE pawns to Queens...I had three queens on the board, and had the king cornered.......................and the game calls DRAW????!!! That feels so bad. I know it's a general rule I just don't get, but it makes no sense to my puny brain. I would have had him mated in one move (Q>g1)....and it forces a draw? Feels bad. I had this game. I assume we reached a move count that calls draw no matter what?

It could be the 50 move rule, if no pawn moves  or captures are made in the last 50 moves it's a draw. 

I was definitely capturing pieces up near the end, as well as promoting three queens at end game (moving pawns). Hmm.

Oh sorry, it's a stalemate, there are no legal moves for the black king and its not in check. 

Ya that feels bad. One more move is check mate. Even when I win I don't sometimes. 

I'm not sure what I could have done to avoid this. I felt like I had the game sealed up tight...but my end games are so ignorant. 

Thanks for the replies. I'll try to keep the stalemate rule in mind next time.

dont promote all your pieces, learn ladder mate or q+k mate or k+r mate, or any of the other mating patterns, but those are the main ones that you should learn first

Gotcha. I'll keep that in mind and look into those mates. I actually felt good because I activated my King pretty early here, to what I thought was a success. I mean, who doesn't think controlling three Queens is a guaranteed win? Uhh...reality check.

Ah, so the bishop caused the stalemate? If I didn't have the bishop, and the king could move along the F file, and then I swung in the third queen to mate...this would have worked?

Thanks.

opponent cant move

you arent checking

that is literally what stalemate is

also, 3 queens are way too many

Yes, thank you. I know three queens are too many, but I've never done that, and I wanted to give it a try.

I totally understand stalemate now. Thank you guys.

In a situation where you have multiple queens for example, or a queen + two rooks or whatever against a lone king, the easiest and absolutely failsafe way to avoid stalemate is to make sure you check the opponent's king on every move you make. That way the king will always be in check and therefore there will be no possibility of blundering a stalemate.

Awesome thank you. To not have stalemate in this particular case, I could have kept the bishop out of it, and waited for the final Queen to swing in on the G file.

Thanks everyone.

Stalemate

To make sure you don't stalemate someone, always try to make sure each move you make is a check. Certainly can't be a stalemate if the opponent king is in check 

If the other side has only a king, you don't need three queens.  If you really want to flex and promote all your pawns, I wouldn't recommend having more than two queens.  Promote the rest to rooks (or just go straight for mate) since it's harder to mess up.

Its fine to have 3 queens, it makes u intimidating. Just look if the enemy king can still move or not every move.

Still traumatized when I got mated by a guy who promoted 4 queens.

I suggest you learn the most common checkmates by heart: king and queen vs king and rook and king vs king and then when you get that much ahead of material on a game, just promote to one queen and checkmate that way while leaving all the extra material just laying somewhere else.

Sometimes you can even sac the extra material so that they don't disturb your learned checkmate pattern.

Mating with two major pieces is ok if they already are on neighbour files so that you can do the latter mate, as well. But be sure you also understand that pattern by heart. What you can't do is leaving the major pieces all scattered around like that, that's asking for stalemate. ESPECIALLY against a bot. A human may give up and not run to the best squares, but a bot will always try the trickiest square on a losing endgame, because it knows very well what it's doing.

Why would someone play a bot?  Presumablyi for practice and for learning.

And so -- with no rating points on the line -- when you get one queen, challenge yourself to beat that bot with just that one queen.

(OTOH, you did learn something:  how to avoid a stalemate (always make sure that you opponent has a legal move) and that with a queen (even more so when there are more queens), it's easy to accidentally stalemate someone if you are playing a move that doesn't result in check!)