What If Pawns Could "Promote" To A Pawn?

Fire

Updated: May 25, 2023, 4:55 PM | 15

A passed pawn is a free-roaming piece that has the ambition to be turned into a reigning monarch. Nevertheless, the passed pawn will every so often promote into a lesser piece than a queen in point value rankings. This is called the process of underpromotion and although rare, it can be really scary if your opponent pulls out a knight from their pawn. But what if the passed pawn had not the slightest desire to promote at all? The passed pawn would not be transformed into a superior piece at all, but it would be reconstructed into the same piece.

Would not that be delightfully exceptional If you had the alternative decision to extract the pawn's potential to be something great, and replaced it with a tool that would assist you by a considerate amount when trying to force stalemate upon yourself in a losing position? This certainly would change chess endgames as we know them.

Algebraic Notations

Algebraic notations, or as we will call them AN, is the standard method for describing the movements in chess. It uses coordinates to determine where a piece will move on the 64 squares. This is used to archive games played, so that they do not get lost in the sands of time. When you make use of algebraic notations, each piece has a letter to represent itself. For example, Bb5, or Qd1. And as you can see, those pieces and a Q and an N are used to represent Queen, and a Bishop. But with pawns, no letter will represent a pawn, it will simply be just "a5" and not "Pa5".

So say a pawn would erupt into another pawn, we would need a way to mark these moves down. There would be exactly 116 amount of new algebraic notations, 16 of which would be a standard promotion (a7=a7)

28 of them which would be a pawn promotion capture check, (axb8=a8+) which would also create the new longest possible notation, beating the previous record holder, Qa1xe4+, without counting the addition to the notation of brilliant moves (!!) or blunders (??) (There are multiple moves with equal length as Qa1xe4+, but that one looks cool.)

28 more notations would be a pawn capture promotion that is checkmate (axb8=b8#). The position below looks completely ridiculous, But for the sake of showing all 28 capture promotions checkmates, it works better than showing 28 different legal diagrams.

Now for the sake of online readability, I am not going to include the 16 standard promotion checks, the 16 promotion checkmates, and the 16 promotion captures, but If you had to make a universal sign for this rule, like something to name all actions like this, It could not be something like a7=a8, due to the fact that there is no constant for the numbers or letters. Regardless of what FIDE regulations say about pawn having no letter to symbolize itself, I think that this should be called Pawn Promote To Pawn, or P=P for the short, time-honored sign.

Drawing By P=P

One of the biggest factors we would have to examine would be stalemate. As you know stalemate arises when one side has no legal moves, but the other side did not supply check, thus resulting in a draw. So visualize you would be in stalemate, excluding your lone past pawn. Normally, if that was the case, then your opponent would have overwhelming dominance because the passed pawn even at the last rank would not be able to stop your opponent's mating maneuvers because your king is trapped, and all you have is your promoted pawn.

So carry inside the P=P rule, and you may salvage a draw from this mess of an endgame. As you may see if you had performed the play via the annotated game above, the king is trapped in stalemate, whites' only hope is the queen, but the queen had at best detained the mating sequence black had organized neatly out due to the fact whites king had no manner to help the assault. So if white could have done P=P? then it would have become a draw by means of stalemate.

After the thematic try of 1...h8=Q, blacks only possible winning move would be 1...Nf4, as this shields the king from any and all possible checks on the F file while also threatening 2...bf3 and 2...g2+ than the next moves would be 3.Kh2, Kh2 g1=Q. For example, 2.Qa8 g2+ 3.Qxg2+ Nxg2, or 2.Qh3+ g2+! 3.Kh2 Nxh3 4.Kxh3 g1=Q.

That does not work, therefore compelling white to try and strain out a stalemate from this mess with 1...h8=p! This is a puzzle of pure complexity, as it shows that an active white queen will doom white, but a lifeless king and a sluggish pawn will save the day. Take a look at another position where P=P will save the day.

This position is also strangely peculiar, even more so than the other one, because if white tries to transform his passed pawn into a queen, with 1.g8=Q?, black can acknowledge this with g1=Q!, and that cancels out whites last move, because now white must take the newly promoted black queen or white will face the seriously damaging consequences After white takes the queen with 2.Qxg1 Rf8+! 3.Qg8 Rxg8+ 4.Kxg8 Kg6!, or 2.Qxf7 Qd4+ 3.Kg8 Qd8+ 4.Qf8+ Qxf8+! 5.Kxf8, making the h pawn save the day as black sacrificed his two utmost greatest pieces. Black is also unharmed by whites many queen checks, in contrast to most settings of P=P where black will look to prohibit these defenses. Here black will meet each check with a capture to avoid stalemate, or mate.

But if P=P was a thing?

then black would have no way to avoid stalemate.

Winning By P=P

Now this would be problematic.

How can one side be in a winning position while extreme underpromotion?

What is the advantage of P=P over all normal promotions?

The answers for this, are unfortunately very limited. When I have first thought of this topic, I was thinking on how a person could benefit from this peculiar move, and all I could think of was the drawing by stalemate. I had went on forums, and tried to search for an answer to see if another member had successfully done it. A young genius named John Beasley had tackled this difficult mission, more than two decades ago.

Your first thoughts of this will probably be "well I am already winning! I do not need P=P to win!' You will also notice soon that blacks last move almost puts you in mate. Your only move would be to capture with a pawn. 1.exf8=Q? or 1.exf8=B? places an extra guard on d6, but that comes with the price of black going 1. Qg8+!, and white can capture this piece, but it will leave the black king in stalemate.

You see that promoting to a queen or bishop doesn't work, so how bout a rook? after 1.exf8=R?, that allows the bishop to be deflected: 1. Qg7+! As you are getting the idea now, the tables have turned and now you are trying to avoid stalemate, rather than embrace it.

The only move that wins, is you guessed it, 1.exf8=P, because it avoids every stalemate trap that black has deviously laid out.

And although it is a frightfully ridiculous position that I hope you will never face in your game, you can see, that moving the pawn is the only move that evades stalemate.

In conclusion, I think that the P=P rule would not only affect our endgames, but also could affect the way we see draws forever. professional masters would probably develop some sort of art with this, it would certainly be interesting to see what kind of masterful plan they could create with P=P,

So, what are your thoughts on P=P? please tell me, I am interested in another viewpoint.