Hello I have seen mate's where the player promotes his pawn to queen (of course) I've even seen promotion's where the opponent promotes a pawn to a rook because anything else is a draw or a knight for a quick mate or check for a trap but has anyone seen a game where a player promotes his piece into a bishop and it was necessary.
I've had a game where my opponent promoted TWO pawns into Bishops. He still managed to mate me eventually.
An artificial position:
http://www.chess.com/article/view/fun-stalemate
A real game:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1253800
(The reasons behind the underpromotion become more clear as the game game goes on {to avoid later stalemates}).
Another real game (easier to fathom):
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1287069
Yes, this is sometimes necessary to avoid stalemate. Picture a situation where you need to control a diagonal with a bishop or queen to mate your opponent, but promoting to a queen would stalemate him because of the queen's extra horizontal/vertical square covering.
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