stalemate

is it stalemate after 16 moves after all pieces are removed from the board except the king?

I never heard of that. The ways I know are:

• 50 moves without a piece being captured
• Repetition of same position 3 times
• And if both players suddenly die of a heart attack (although some people claim the first one to hit the floor dead, loses - which prompted a battle for taller chairs, but that is another issue altogether)

But that's it.

A Stalemate is when there is no legal move to do but the king is not in check (so it is not checkmate)

LlordLlama gave some exemples of draws. But in the 50 moves rule, no pawn move can be made. If so, the count goes to zero again, and other 50 moves are needed.

About the heart attack, the one who's time was running will eventualy lose.

Oops. I guess I didn't differentiate Stalemate from Draw. The guy is right. Stalemate is ONLY when it's a player's turn, they're not in check and they have no legal moves.

So now, Stalemate has nothing to do with the number of moves played.

They can't move their knight, because it is pinned. And all their pawns are blocked.

There is no legal moves to do and the game is a draw.

Funny actually, when you think about the situation in terms of real life. If you're forced into a spot, life still has to go on, so you have to make a bad choice even if you don't have a choice.

The only move options in a Stalemate are forbidden by chess rules. Like, for exemple, to make an irregular pawn move and capture a piece on the other side of the board with it.

If we make a relation with real life, that would be like breaking laws when you think you have no option besides desobeying then.

Actually, many criminals think their crimes are justifiable by this.

Thanks all! I actually googled the question too. One very interesting comment was this thought of 16 move stalement is more common in the US. It was how we played as children, so I wanted to learn if it was true, because I was told otherwise by fhdIII. I think we played that way, because if 16 moves were not enough to checkmate after all the opponent has is the king, you probably were not going to get checkmate anyway...lol.