What Is Pawn Promotion? | Chess Video Lecture | Learn to Play Chess: From a Novice to a Fierce Competitor - Hobbies

okay hi I'm David Sullivan from chess
NYC today I want to talk about pawns and
pawn promotion at the beginning of a
game of chess we have to bring out our
pawns in order to free our pieces but at
the end of the game we want to promote
our pawns so that we can have extra
material let's say we reached a position
like this White has a rook and an extra
Quan the pawn is only one square away
from getting to the end of the board
when a pawn gets the end of the board it
promotes it becomes a more powerful
piece than upon it can become anything
other than another pawn it has to become
something other than a pawn or a king
there can only be one boss on the board
at any one time most of the time pawns
promote to the Queen which is the most
powerful piece in this position if why
it advances the pawn and promotes it to
a queen the Queen will be attacking the
King that'll be a check the King cannot
go for squares and capture the Queen
there's nobody that can block and the
rook prevents the King from escaping so
this would be an example of pawn
promoting leading to checkmate
there are times though that you might
want to promote the pawn and make
something other than a queen
for instance here
white has a king and two pawns black has
a king in a queen the king and the queen
are usually much more powerful than the
king and the two pawns and if it was
blacks turn to play black would just
take this pawn and eventually the king
and the queen would beat the King in the
pond but if it's White's turn to play
here he can win by using something
called under promoting now most people
would advance the pawn promote to a
queen in this situation because the
Queen is the most powerful piece but
here black would then be able to bring
his own queen down to c1 and say
checkmate swipe so promoting to a queen
would not actually help white but if
white in this position promoted to
something less than a queen in this case
a knight the night would be forking
attacking both the king and the queen at
the same time the king would will the
knight gets the Queen check the King can
attack the night the night escapes but
eventually the King the knight and the
pawn will defeat the king the King the
knight in the pawn will work together to
eventually turn this guy into a queen
and then the Queen the King the Queen
and the knight will eventually checkmate
life and I hope you now understand pawn
promotion