Most of my games are ending in stalemates! What should I do?

Resign before there will be a stalemate.


Most of my stalemates come from when I have 10 seconds left on my clock (without a delay). If you aren't in serious time-trouble, then you should be calculating, and therefore you will always know when your opponent doesn't have a move.

When you should be winning, with some kind of massive material advantage, make sure you check the guy with your move. Doesn't always work though, just calculating it all out is an infinitely better solution.

What kind of strategy are you using? I've had to force myself out of the habit of wreaking total destruction on my opponent so that I can avoid stalemates. I have a bad tendency to want to capture ALL of his pieces and then attack his King when he's extremely weak. I know it's a pitiful game strategy, but I'm still new.

What kind of stalemates? Not-enough-material stalemates? King-pawn vs King? Unnecessary amount of pieces?

Stalemates occur as a result of improper planning.
Unless of course you initiated it.

I think my stalemates were being created on account of the fact that the king was not being checked before checkmate occured. Windows Vista's chess game recognizes this. Usually, I trap the king against the edge of the board with my queen and a rook or two. If the king has no place to move and has not been checked that's when stalemate or draw happens.

Yup, leaving him without a legal move when he's not in check is a stalemate. As Perseus suggested, simply making sure that every move is a check when you've got that type of overwhelming advantage is a good way to avoid this.

But eventually, you'll have to learn to plan better in these situations. I'd actually recommend the book "Silman's Complete Endgame Course" by Jeremy Silman to learn how to plan in the endgame better. The first chapter is pretty much entirely devoted to the topic of this thread. You can stop reading after that, and come back to the more advanced material when you feel you need it later on in your development as a player.

--Fromper

If you often accidentally stalemate your opponent, you could try some exercises against a chess program. For example, try to checkmate a lone king with two queens, using short time controls.

Or, using a board, set up a couple of white pieces in random places, and as quickly as possible, find all the places where a black king would be stalemate.

Using too much force to check a king can lead to stalemate. For instance, too many queens (from promoted pawns) can lead to stalemate by offering too many attack angles. Resist the urge to go up by more than one queen more than your opponent; promote to a rook instead, or even a minor piece. If you have too many powerful pieces, leave something off in a corner, away from the action but available if needed. And leave your opponent with a piece that can move when you move to trap their king.