Sure, but it's not so easy to find valid analogies for stalemate.

In this case, the inability of the orc to move wouldn't mean that Aragorn couldn't move either. He would finish off the last orc and call it a win. Hence, this is more like checkmate than stalemate.

We've got Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf, the riders of Rohan, the army of Gondor and all those ghostly blokes ...

And all that the forces of Morrdorr have got left is one lonely little orc.

And that orc can claim a draw because he can't move?

Nah. I'm not seeing it.

Stalemate is a rule for the computer age. An impossible situation is created. The player has to move, but the player cannot move, therefore the program crashes. The guy who crashed the program is not rewarded with a win for doing it, that would be silly.

<I've seen Lord of the Rings. If the forces of Morrrrdorrr had been whittled down to the last orc, Aragorn wouldn't have called it a draw cos that orc couldn't move.>

But nobody is making that argument. Immobility without check is a draw (stalemate), while immobility with check is a win (checkmate).

<And that orc can claim a draw because he can't move?>

I think you missed the point of my previous post?

<It's a moot point because the laws of chess aren't about to change.>

I'll admit that I've seen several movies where it works a bit like this. Most typically it happens when the good guy is fighting off a gang of bad guys. It seems that bad guys, despite their reputation, often have the decency to wait their turn to attack the good guy.

Even the good guys do it sometimes. Like remember Mirror, Mirror in Star Trek, where it's Kirk, McCoy, Scott and Uhura all against Evil Spock, but they attack him one by one until Kirk finally just breaks a skull over his skull.

<But yes, real-life analogies for stalemate aren't so easy to find.>

I have a beginner's book somewhere, called "Chess: First Steps", or something like that, which is really quite imaginative, and tries to give verbal story-like explanations of all the concepts. I think they tried to explain stalemate with something about a tiger driven into its cave, where it couldn't get out, but it was too dangerous for the hunter to go in to get him. (I think it was better than I'm explaining it here. I think I know where the book is if you want to hear it).

Good point, and perhaps even relevant as a chess metaphor because sometimes it is the weaker side who forces the stalemate, e.g.

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The lone black king can force a draw against the white king and pawn either by repetition or by stalemate, IMO adding force to the assertion that stalemate is properly considered a draw.

<In a way it's a double defeat>

In a way, but if Spence had found the stalemate tactic in this game, it would have felt to him more victorious, and Klinova would have felt more defeated.

<Another stalemate metaphor attempt>

I've never found a really satisfying metaphor for stalemate, but perhaps the recent "Dr. Strange" movie (starring Benedict Cumberbatch) offers as good a try as any.

(** Movie Spoiler alert **)

Dr. Strange must do battle with an evil "dark side" enemy who is enormously more powerful than himself. The powerful enemy can easily kill Dr. Strange, and he does!

However, Dr. Strange has devised a "time loop", whereby this episode restarts and the enemy has to kill Dr. Strange again. After killing him perhaps thousands of times, the enemy finally realizes that he cannot make any real progress.

Well, as I say, the metaphor is conquering an enemy country, but the leader escapes. Even with once's original analogy, if Aragorn personally slaughtered every Orc in Mordor, but Sauron got away, then it's not a victory. They'll still have to deal with Sauron in the future.

Stalemate is totally logical if you remember the object of chess: to capture the enemy king. Capturing other material is nice, but it's a means to an end (the end of capturing the King), not an end in itself.

<It was cool on the fringe of the clearing and Tarna the leopard was content to lie on the downwind side. It was two days since Benson the hunter had struck the leopard’s fresh trail crossing a muddy track near the river. Tarna was not unduly disturbed, for it was not the first time he had been pursued by hunters from the nearby village, anxious to put a stop to his occasional night raids on their goats.

Tarna raised his head and surveyed the scene, twitching nostrils acutely sensitive to any possible intruder. The air was hot and still and Tarna lazed drowsily.

Meanwhile Benson had moved round in a wide detour since first sighting the leopard and was now about half a mile from the clearing, approaching upwind along the dried-up course of a river bed. Benson knew he must be near the leopard and moved forward cautiously. Suddenly there was a crashing of branches in the undergrowth; and an impala, horns extended back along its graceful body, bounced across Benson’s path and disappeared into the long grasses to his right. Benson cursed lightly to himself. The sound of the impala’s startled dash brought Tarna to his feet, tense and expectant. The leopard and the hunter must have seen one another at the same instant, for as Benson fired Tarna bounded across the clearing, following the track that led to the nearest water hole. Benson ran swiftly in the direction of the leopard’s retreat. Along the track he observed occasional spots of blood. The leopard was evidently wounded. This could be dangerous. Unexpectedly the trail swung off the track to the left towards the main river bed. Ten yards across the dried grasses was a clump of reeds, some six yards wide and twice as deep. There was no doubt Tarna was there. Benson stopped with his back to a nearby tree and surveyed the scene. To enter the reeds would almost certainly be fatal. He would have to wait.

Tarna was angry. He lay still, his flank smarting where Benson’s bullet had ploughed a six-inch long groove. There was no choice but to stay where he was. Tarna could see Benson clearly, though the latter was unable to observe the leopard in the innermost gloom of the reeds. Hunter and hunted waited motionless. It was stalemate.

The key points to make the distinction:

(1) One side of the conflict is unable to move (although still alive).

(2) As a consequence of (1), the other side is unable to attack.

You know, that's a pretty hard rule to relate to a real life situation too. Why would a war or a battle suddenly end just because people had moved the same way a lot? How could the weaker army force an armistice on a stronger army simply by pointing out that soldiers had moved to the same places several times?

In Shogi, it's flatly illegal to even make a move that repeats the position 3 times. It might help to add a move like that to chess (explicitly excluding perpetual check, which is usually a matter of necessity for the checking side). The rule would simply say "You cannot make a move that repeats the position three times UNLESS that move delivers check."

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The game continued

51. a4 Rh2+ 52. Ke1 Rh5 53. Kf2 Rg5 54. Ke2 Rh5, and I claimed a draw by repetition by announcing my intention to play 55. Kf2.

What happened? Why did Black allow this?? Well, he didn't realize he WAS allowing it. He didn't know it was the third time because the moves had been different. The first time I created the position by playing a4, but the 2nd and 3rd times I reached it by playing Kf2. He didn't know it was a draw, didn't want a draw, and was pretty mad when he realized that it was a draw.

The ideas of chess don't really benefit from analogies. It's actually more likely that the ideas of chess (which are readily understood) may be a useful analogy for a more complicated real-life situation.

The three-fold rule of chess mainly protects the defending player from the attacker who doesn't now how to covert his advantage (say in a K+Q vs K+R+P ending). The attacker gets a couple tries to make progress in a given position, but failing that, the defender has the right to claim a draw.

I don't see anything unfair or illogical about the fact that Klinova blundered away his win in this game, or that Spence blundered it back by resigning in a drawn position. That's chess; blunders are a part of the game.

And the nature of this particular blunder seems to be a logical consequence of the rules of chess, specifically the rule that a King cannot move into or through check, and the rule that the object of the game is the capture of the King. It may seem counter-intuitive that a guy with one piece can draw against a guy with 16, but only if you forget what the object of the game is.

By the same principle, this position is a win for White, even though he's horribly outnumbered. That's also counter-intuitive, but totally logical and correct:

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Moving beyond chess, for a moment, I remember just becoming confused from all the analogies used to explain spin-1/2 in old Scientific American articles.

So much clearer (and easier) are spinors. Just do it (the math, that is).

Although it is cute to do a 2π → 4π demo of rotations holding that cup of coffee in the one hand. There's others on youtube (but are they useful?).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7w...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nat... (maybe a little more)

<While the number "three" is somewhat arbitrary, it seems fair. At least I think ten would be way too many, and one would be too few.>

Yes, it's better, but only for some cases. Consider this:

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Here, the inferior side has forced stalemate.

I think we can say that in all cases, stalemate is the result of an oversight or a lack of ability on the part of the superior side. Again, this fact makes it seem incorrect to award the superior side with the win.

<And the nature of this particular blunder seems to be a logical consequence of the rules of chess, specifically the rule that a King cannot move into or through check, and the rule that the object of the game is the capture of the King. It may seem counter-intuitive that a guy with one piece can draw against a guy with 16, but only if you forget what the object of the game is.>

Exactly. Consider a football game between team A and team B. Team A can't gain a single yard, and so they have to punt every time. Each time team B gets the ball, they march it right down the field to team A's one yard line. However, they can't punch it across the goal line, nor can their kicker make a field goal. Hence, the game ends in a 0-0 tie. The pure statistician will complain that team B should be awarded the win because of their superior yardage, but the rules dictate that the game to be decided by scoring, not yardage.