Pawn promotion is a special move of pawns in Chess. It happens when a pawn reaches the back rank of the opponent, i.e. the opposite side of the board, and then it is replaced by any piece which that side had at the beginning of the game except pawn and king: queen, rook, bishop or knight. The choice is up to the player making that move, and is not restricted to the captured pieces; this means that a player can have two queens, three rooks etc. at once. The most common choice is naturally the queen. Promoting to a queen is called queening, and to an other piece is called underpromotion.

Example:

White pawn before and after promotion

Black pawn before and after promotion

Further example for pawn promotion:

Pawn promotion can also be a capturing move. Here the white pawn captures the rook, promotes to a bishop (underpromotion), and gives check to the king – all in one single move.

Notes

Pawn promotion occurs mostly in endgames (i.e. when only few pieces remained on the board). There passed pawns are very valuable, i.e. pawns without opposing pawn stopping them from promotion (either by blocking it, or by threatening to capture it).

In chess variants

The chess variants have usually similar pawn promotion rules as chess, but the promotion fields and the piece choice may differ. Nevertheless some general rules can be given (but there are exceptions):

• Pawns promote on the opposite end of the board, on fields where they could not move further as pawns.
• If a pawn gets to a place by capturing where it is blocked before the end of the board, it stays there as a pawn and can only promote if it gets back to the main direction by capturing again. For example: Cross Chess, Shifted Chess (H+V), Four-Handed Chess.
• Generally on pawn promotion, such pieces can be chosen which existed in that game before (except pawns and kings). If the two sides had originally different kind of pieces, than each side can select only those pieces which that side had in the beginning. For example: Chigorin Chess, Half Top-heavy Chess.
• An exception from the previous rule is that if there were no pieces except pawns and kings, or there were only weak pieces (on any side), e.g. there were no queen or similar, then usually the players can choose any standard chess piece (except pawns and kings) on pawn promotion. For example: Pawn Endgame, Queens vs Knights.

Example of unusual promotion rules:

• Balbo's Chess

External links

• Wikipedia: Promotion (chess)