Promotion — Chess Puzzles

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A pawn that reaches the eighth rank becomes any piece you choose, and it is almost always a queen. That is why a single passed pawn can outweigh a piece in the endgame, and why the tactics around promotion — clearing the path, deflecting the blocker, promoting with check — decide so many otherwise level positions.

How to spot it

• A passed pawn is on the sixth or seventh rank with nothing in front of it.
• Only one piece is holding the promotion square, so deflecting it is enough.
• The pawn promotes with check, which buys the tempo the defender needed.
• Sometimes a knight, not a queen, is the right piece — usually because it comes with check or avoids stalemate.

A worked example

White: king a5, pawn b6. Black: king e6, knight d5. White to move.

1. b7 puts the pawn one square from queening.
2. Neither black piece gets to the queening square in time. Kd6 is the try, and it is one move too slow.
3. b8 promotes with check, so Black never gets a free move to organise anything against the new queen.

The idea In an endgame a single passed pawn can outweigh a piece, because the piece has to arrive in time and the pawn only has to run.