Fair enough. But I think if you want to find a natural looking smothered mate with the stalemate feature, looking at a variety of smothered mates will give you more ideas. I might try to come up with one myself at some point.
We just look it up in the rules. If you find the current official rules of chess philosophically unpleasant, you can make up your own and play that game instead. One nice thing about the rule change you’re describing here is that it will have no practical effect on any actual chess games, so you can play under your rules against people playing under the standard rules, and you’re both happy. 
Why are bishops line pieces rather than 2-square leapers? People just like the game that way, so that’s the rule, whether it’s intuitively pleasing or not.
If I’m understanding the OP correctly, what he’s saying is that after checkmate, there is an implied sequence of moves that results in the king being taken, and this, for the OP, is the real end of the game. It’s like the home team batting in the bottom of the 9th when they’re already winning. There’s no need to actually go through with it, but it does give a sense of completeness.
The purpose of the check rules, with this perspective, is to delay the taking of the king for as long as possible; that is, you can’t force yourself to lose quite so directly.
And most of the time, this is how things could go. The white (say) king is checkmated. But now it’s white’s turn, making some move that doesn’t do anything important, and then black swoops in somehow to take the king.
If white is in stalemate in this situation, then white can’t make a move, and that impossibility, according to the other rules, leads to a draw, thus interrupting the implied sequence of moves that leads to the white king being taken.
The problem with the OP’s reasoning is that the game ends at checkmate. And so the stalemate situation that the OP describes does not actually arise.
And white to move? This is an impossible position.
Here is what the FIDE Laws (Rules) of Chess have to say: (emphasis mine)
*9.2
Check must be parried by the move immediately following. If any check cannot be parried, the king is said to be “checkmated” (“mated”). *
In the OP’s situation, the check cannot be parried because the player in check cannot make a legal move to get out of check. The fact that the player cannot make a legal move, period, is irrelevant.
10.3
The game is drawn when the king of the player who has the move is not in check, and this player cannot make any legal move. The player’s king is then said to be “stalemated”. This immediately ends the game.
In other words, it is not stalemate if you are in check.
Somewhat related, I always thought stalemate was kind of cheesey anyway. If you can’t move, I should be able to take successive moves, queen all of my pawns, and beat you with a herring.
It’s not like any army has been able to say, “we can’t move, it’s a draw!!”
You’re not the only one. (I’m okay with it, but there’s a lot of people who don’t particularly like that stalemate is a draw.)
As I understand it, it’s black’s turn to move on the hypothetical, and the OP is saying that black has no legal move, because all his pawns and pieces are completely hemmed in. I don’t know why this is a problem–it’s just a checkmate.
I would word my argument this way: on the next turn, Black being unable to make any move gets him out of check, because the resulting condition of stalemate prevents white from moving any pieces either, and so puts the Black king out of White’s range of attack, so it is not a checkmate.
There is no next turn. White got the checkmate and the win with the knight move.
I fail to see why the OP is so fixated on the capture of the enemy king. He seems to think that is the unspoken aim of the game but he is wrong.
The term checkmate itself comes from the Persian and is often wrongly translated as “the king is dead.”. ln fact, as this link makes clear, it means “the king is helpless”.
See etymology - Origin of the chess term "checkmate" - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Nothing could better express the checkmate position whereby the king is threatened (in check) and helpless and thus defeated. Nothing even suggesting that regicide follows.
I think I am done here.
It’s a fine argument to make. The fact that the king is not actually captured in a game of chess can seem a bit strange, and the stalemate rule sometimes feels a bit strange too. It would be reasonable to play a variant of chess with different rules - in fact I’ve played blitz chess with the rule that leaving/putting your king in check is legal, and capturing your opponent’s king wins the game. But this does not cause any problem with the rules of standard chess - they’re clear, and the situation Zach29 is talking about is not some kind of omission or loophole.
It’s simple: Am I in check? If Yes -> Can I get out of check? If No -> Checkmate.
I’m unsure how stalemate fits into this. Stalemates only occur when the king is not in check, and the king very much is in check here.
Like I stated, circular logic. It’s either a stalemate, in which case it’s not checkmate, or it’s a checkmate, in which case it’s not stalemate.
This the logic keeps referring to itself, there’s no way to make meaningful sense out of it; we know it has to be either one of those two conditions, but we cannot specify which.
Try to craft a logical definition to describe what we intuitively feel; you will find it is not as easy as you think. Of particular importance is how one goes about defining the precise meaning of what “check” is. And do not use vague or potentially ambiguous concepts.
Sometimes pure logic can lead us to seemingly absurd outcomes, and that is exactly what I am trying to do here.
I will absolutely agree with you though that no judge would side with my logical argument in an actual chess match. So we’re not disagreeing about that.
I am discussing this from a purely rational and philosophical perspective.
Of course we can, and there is nothing circular about it. It is a checkmate the instant White moves his knight to that spot. The game is over. There is no next turn, and the “stalemate” never occurs.
I’m trying to assert that achieving a stalemate gets you out of check.
Or that it should still be considered a stalemate in this rare situation, even if your king is in check, because of the implied meaning of what “check” represents.
Again, I want to draw a distinction between “legal moves” and “possible moves”. I would define a move as “possible” but “not legal” if it results in your king being in check.
True
True
This is checkmate. There is no “next move”
Again, this is checkmate.
Yes, it is checkmate. Yes it Should be considered a checkmate.
It was checkmate, there is no “next move”.
…It is…
It certainly isn’t a false checkmate. It is checkmate. Game over. As per the rules.
True
The game is over, there is no “next move” except to reset and play again, or storm out in a huff.
They are both forbidden in exactly the same “sense.”
If the rules are slightly changed, you can do whatever you want. It is no longer a game of chess. It would be a variation.
You are free to make up and play with any rules/games you want as long as your opponent know and agree to them.
Again, you are free to define anything you like for your own games.
I can certainly see why you would intuitively feel that way.
I am just suggesting that the special situation I described may be slightly different than a normal checkmate.
And what DO the rules say exactly???
I took a look at the rules from the FID and they were actually kind of vague as it relates to this point I am making, when I tried to logically piece the conditions together.
It just says: “A piece is said to attack an opponent’s piece if the piece could make a capture on that square according to Articles 3.2 to 3.8.”
But then when you look at what it refers to, it just says that, for example, “The rook may move to any square along the file or the rank on which it stands”.
Do you see how the wording is actually kind of vague as it relates to this particular issue? Is a checkmate when the king could be captured in the next move, if hypothetically another turn was allowed? The rules do not really specify this point.
Except that situation is not a stalemate. Stalemate is defined with the king not being in check and no possible legal moves playable. If the king is in check on his move, a stalemate cannot occur:
Emphasis mine.
Also, from 1.2 of the same laws:
That pretty clearly to me covers your situation, and the stalemate definition specifically excludes your situation as a stalemate.