Stalemate explained?

[L. Whistle]

Hello,

Really enjoying this game.

The music is great, runs smooth...

Don't like the soft lighting and not being able to look at the game board when the games finished.

My question though:

Can someone explain to me how stalemate works; i guess as a kid I never learned this rule.

I find myself dominating the game board, and then all of a sudden as I'm drawing near a victory, I get a stalemate lol.

Many regards

[Threeist]

Sure

On your turn (and the other players turn), you must move a piece.
It is possible where you can not do so.

Situation: Your king is in the corner of the board. There is an enemy queen two spaces by one space away (this can be two ranks / one file or vice versa). You have no other pieces, and it's your turn.

The game is drawn.

---

Now there are four different ways for the game to be drawn.
1) You can offer / accept a draw. Chess Ultra doesn't do this.
2) Threefold repetition. If the board repeats itself three times, the game is drawn.
3) No legal moves (This is the tightest definition of stalemate)
4) The 50 move rule (No pawn moves, no pieces taken, game is drawn)

In practice, #2 is probably the most common--and its also something you can exploit the AI with. If the AI decides it does not want a draw, it will make a worse move instead, and I've won a piece and a game because of this.