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En Passant: The Larger Debate
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En Passant: The Larger Debate

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ArtyPentti
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En Passant is one of the most debated chess moves, it has been disputed for years now. 

En Passant translates to "in passing" from French. Although En Passant is rarely played in chess games, when it does happen it makes somebody in the world a frustrated person. 

The rules for En Passant are very simple: 

  • The opposing pawn has to have moved two squares on the previous move
  • Your pawn must be horizontally adjacent either to the right or left of the enemy pawn

The white pawn moves forward, the black pawn moves two squares ahead, and boom, En Passant is played.

In old versions of chess, pawns could not move two squares on the first move. The pawn's interesting first move movement was introduced to the world between the 13th and 16th centuries. En passant was created to make sure pawns trying to escape capture by jumping past a square attacked by an opposing pawn couldn't happen. 

The following game was played between Magnus Carlsen and Loek van Wely all the way back in 2006, 7 years before Magnus became World Champion. In this game, en passant is played twice! On moves 12 and 24, Carlsen plays en passant, a true rarity! Magnus went on to win the 34 move game.

This next game was played in 1928 between Gunnar Gundersen and A. H. Faul in the Pietzcker Christmas Tournament. 

The game was 15 moves in all after Gundersen played the "Greek Gift" sacrifice on move 9. He sacrificed the bishop but gained the upper hand.
After 14. Nxe6+, Faul has two choices. He can move his king h7 and let the white queen mate him, but Faul moves his pawn forward and blocks the discovered check. This leads to a very cool en passant mate!

Our last game is from chess.com’s very own @alphaous! He won with a cool en passant mate very recently, and today i am sharing it with you!

@alphaous provides his own annotations throughout as you can see

The Larger Debate
So, obviously en passant can be used very well in chess games. Why is it hated? Well, it is very frustrating to have en passant played on you, especially if you don't have any idea what it is. Chess.com receives endless reports of bugs which just turn out to be cases of en passant.
Fide announced in March 2012, that they would be rescinding the en passant rule, taking effect May of 2012. This stunned many. Fide said they had a decisive majority on the vote, when in fact the margin was only 85 to 73 in the voting of all member national chess federations. A Fide spokesperson said, "This is a necessary change in our continuing effort to improve the game". Concerned chess players said that a 66% majority should have been implemented and required for the vote. Fide did not listen regardless.
For more insight, I asked some of chess.com's everyday chess players one question: "Do you think the en passant rule should be legal/illegal? Explain your answer."
 
@Chesspawn921 said, "I think that En Passant Should be legal. Consider this:
This position should be drawn. If there was no En Passant, White could just Pawn Break and win due to the ability to move 2 squares, and it would be unfair. En Passant makes sure it is drawn. It prevents unfair advantages due to that move."


@Colorfulcake said, "Of course it should be legal. How else would we get fire reactions from beginners seeing en passant?”

@CDRED141 said, “No, it should not be made "illegal". It's a part of the game and I see no good reason to remove it. It is not even used a lot in my opinion, I don't believe I have ever played it and I've never had an opponent play it against me. It's a helpful move and some people use it a lot, I definitely think it should not be removed or made "illegal".

@alphaous said, “It should definitely be legal, its one of the coolest parts of chess! Especially for those individuals who have checkmate with it!”

Conclusion 


In my opinion, en passant should be legal. It provides a very interesting factor to the game. it also is such a unique move, nearly as unique as the knight’s movement.

Regardless of what the majority says, this debate will go on for who knows how long.

If you want to learn more about en passant, click here!

Thanks for reading this! Sorry if some of the text is smaller, and if some of the text above photos is 1000 spaces a part; chess.com had a weird bug this week that did that. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to work, but thanks to those who tried to help!

Would love some feedback from you guys!

Thanks again,

@FA-18_SuperHornet2007