What Happens When A Pawn Reaches The Other Side? - Chess ...

What happens when a pawn reaches the other side? - Chess Questions

Posted in Chess on January 6, 2022

In chess, a pawn can only move or capture in a forwards direction. But what happens when your pawn does reach the other side? Well, there is an important, special rule for just such an occasion!

My pawn reached the other side of the board. What now? Promotion time!

The pawn that reaches the other side needs to be swapped with another piece. Either a Rook, Knight, Bishop or Queen. This is called promoting the pawn.

You could argue that the pawn gains new abilities, such as moving backward.

When you are playing with a real chess set, you can usually use one of the taken pieces. If your Queen is still on the board, people in casual games usually use an upside-down Rook.

But beware! In official tournaments, you need to use the correct piece. It wouldn't be the first time where a player would have to play on with a Rook that was intended to be a Queen.

If you can't find the correct piece quickly enough, pause the clock and call an arbiter.

How to get your pawn to the other side

In most situations, you can only get a pawn to the other side once the board has been cleared a bit. The most succesful way to get your pawn to the other side is by creating a passed pawn.

In most cases, this will end up being a pawn on the a, b, g or h-rank.

Black can't stop the passed pawn. In chess, the position is often more important than the material count. Black can't stop the passed pawn from reaching the other side, so ends up in a losing position.The fact that both players are equal in material for the next moves, is irrelevant. White has a gigantic advantage!

It's way easier to create a passed pawn if you find a way to undermine your opponent's pawn structure.

When should you underpromote your pawn?

Underpromoting means promoting your pawn to a piece other than a Queen.

There are scenarios where you need to underpromote to make sure you don't lose your game or end in a stalemate.

There are 3 common reasons to promote your pawn to something else than a Queen:

• Avoiding stalemate
• Tactical reason
• Toying with your opponent

Underpromotion to avoid stalemate

In the following example white needs to underpromote their pawn to prevent a stalemate:

White can pick either a Knight or Bishop, both lead to a winning position for white. Promoting to either Queen or Rook results in an immediate draw by stalemate, because the black King can no longer move.

Tactical reasons to underpromote your pawn

The most common underpromotion for tactical reasons is the Knight. That's because the Knight can cover squares that no other piece can. For example, after the promotion to a Queen, the promoted piece covers all the squares a Rook and Bishop would cover together.But promoting to a Knight would result in covering different squares, leading to very different results!

The Black Queen threatens checkmate on d1. Only the Knight can achieve victory for white. The Knight would fork the King and Queen, winning the Queen. Any other promotion would lead to a loss for white.

Underpromoting to toy with your opponent

Sometimes players will underpromote to send a message to their opponent. For example, if they want you to resign.

In other cases, they do it to show off or practice a skill. For example, they might do it because they want to practice their 2 Bishops checkmate.

GM Aman Hambleton regularly underpromotes on chess.com. After he paralyzes the opponent (so they can't make any useful moves), he underpromotes and tries to get the most humiliating checkmate possible.You can see him doing this below:

Can you promote a pawn to a second queen?

Yes. Any pawn that reaches the back rank can be promoted to any piece, including a Queen. If you manage to get all your pawns to the other side, you can end up with a maximum of 9 Queens. 8 Promoted pawns, and the Queen you started the game with.

Most difficult promotion puzzle in chess history

There is a legend that this puzzle changed chess forever. Pay close attention to the rules.Every piece moves the way you know and you can promote your pawn to whatever piece you want. Obviously, you can't end up putting yourself in check.It's white's turn and you are to mate your opponent in 1 move!You can't move the black pieces (obviously).

This is IMPOSSIBLE!

- 95% of attempted puzzle solvers!

Only read on if you want to see the solution!

For a long period, it was possible to promote to ANY piece including pieces of your opponent (except for Kings and Pawns).At some point, it was decided that you can't promote to a piece of your opponent's color!

A completely absurd situation. Winning with a pawn that reaches the other side, and then betrays his own King? And then it even results in a checkmate anyway. Funny and cool. But absurd!The origin of this puzzle is shrouded in mystery, but it is said this situation had never occurred before. At least we have gotten a great puzzle out of it!