[conistonwater]

True, in fact I think a lot of those ideas are not even remotely new. For example, in shogi (Japanese chess), stalemate is a loss for the stalemated side (because that side can't make progress), and three-fold repetition is a loss for the side giving checks (because that side chose not to make progress).

I remember the Kramnik-DeepMind collaboration studied the stalemate=win variant, I don't remember what the results were.

What would be the wisdom of Black winning stalemates, though?

[dragontamer]

> What would be the wisdom of Black winning stalemates, though?

Ad-hoc balancing change. White currently has the advantage in chess. Any rule changes therefore, should be +Black advantage, to minimize the harm to the win/loss ratios.

Rule-changes should aim for 50/50 win/loss ratio between Black and White. Well... ideally we make a better game (and this "better game" probably is one with fewer draws). But if we're in a situation between two choices, one benefiting white and the second benefiting black... prefer to give the advantage to the weaker side.

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Armageddon Chess (Black wins all draws) has already been tried, and the advantage is distinctly Black. It fixes the draw problem by brute force, but it goes too far and now White is at a disadvantage. Splitting up the draws to mitigate Black's advantage under Armageddon rules would be preferred if 50/50 balance is considered the ideal.

[DarylZero]

The logic is that white has the advantage of going first, so black gets the advantage of winning stalemates.

This is not anywhere near balanced, though.