If a pawn reaches the end of the board for promotion, and queens are still on the board, does one have to choose another piece for promotion or can one simply use another "spare" queen and promote that way?

in the rules of chess, if you have a queen on the board and you are fortunate enough to get all 8 pawns to the other end of the board then you are entitled to have 8 more queens

Just had an arugment about this with a friend recently....he's a casual player, and believed you could only promote to a piece that wasn't on the board. A quick wiki revealed that actually used to be the case, but the rules changed in 1889 (about then anyway) and allowed you to promote to any piece.

little off topic but interesting fact. the queen used to be a fairly weak piece, only able to move or capture one square in a diagonal direction. the modern queen's move arose in 15th century Europe. the piece is archaically known as the minister.

so by the old rules, what if you havent lost any pieces upon promotion?(non-pawn pieces)

Ah...that makes good sense! Ok, time to go buy 14 extra spare queens! lol