Underpromotion

All of us have had at least one moment where we promote our pawn to a queen. We always promote our pawn to a queen, obviously because it is the strongest and second most valuable piece. However, there is a little thing called underpromotion. It is when you don't promote your pawn to a queen. It may seem weird at first, but it can literally save your game!

What is underpromotion?

As said above, Underpromotion  is when you promote a pawn to a rook, a bishop or a knight instead of a queen.

Now, you may ask, in what instances should underpromotion be used?

well, here is an example:

In this position, black has a queen, but white has two passed pawns. one of them is one move away from promotion. It is white to play. What would be the best move for white?

Well, if you promote to a queen in this position, 

Black will capture white's other pawn, and the position will most likely be a draw.

So, white should use the concept of underpromotion.

If white looks attentively, he or she can see that the king and queen can both be hit if a knight was on e8.

That's right!

white should play e8=N+ !!

Lets see what happens:

As you can see, using a simple concept, white has easily gone from being 7 points down, to being a piece and a pawn up. The white pawn can now freely promote to a queen or rook,(or, if you want to be fancy, even a bishop) and certainly win the game!

This is the end of this blog. Goodbye guys, if you liked the blog, then please comment down below, and as always, have a nice day!