What does a stalemate involve? Are stalemate and draw the same thing? What is stalemate called in German? What term for stalemate is used in French?
What is stalemate?
This is a chess situation where a player cannot move anywhere with his chess piece, but the player is not directly in chess. One could also call stalemate "passive chess". Because the player is not in chess, he cannot be checkmated. Then there is only one solution, namely that the game is a draw. Within chess, a chess game that ends with two winners is called a "draw".
Stalemate in different languages
The chess term stalemate originally comes from the Italian word "patta", which means "tie" or "undecided". Funnily enough, in Italy the word "patta" is not used for "undecided", but the word "stallo" is used instead.
Stalemate in German:
Patt.
Stalemate in French:
Pat.
Stalemate in English:
Stalemate.
Stalemate in Spanish:
Ahogado.
Stalemate in Italian:
Stallo (Patta).
In some other languages it is called Pat (Polish), Patt (Swedish), пат (Russian), 僵持, jiang ju, he qi (Chinese), 膠着状態 (Japanese), Pat (Dutch) and Afogado (Portuguese).
What is checkmate? - How do you make a checkmate?
The term Draw covers more situations than a simple stalemate. A tie can occur in a variety of situations when players find that no one can win the game without someone making a huge mistake. In such a case, professional chess players usually shake hands and say "draw" instead of wasting time by moving the pieces around the board endlessly until someone is so tired that they make a fatal mistake and lose.
There are also situations where someone is making a poker bluff and seems to have a significant advantage, even though the player knows that sooner or later, he won't have a good chance. Then, the player may also bluff and call a draw instead of risking losing a long game. Similarly, a weaker player, or someone who feels inferior, may try to sabotage the game and actively try to force a draw. There are several strategies for forcing draws, even with "bad" pieces. It's an advantage for the chess players to master at least some draw techniques in order to have an ace up their sleeve when a game is lost.
