Understanding Underpromotion

     What do you think of when someone mentions chess promotions? Do you imagine a pawn marching down the length of the board to become a queen? I'm willing to bet that a large majority of y'all reading this have never promoted a pawn to anything besides this all-powerful female monarch. After all, promoting to a queen just makes logical sense. Why wouldn't you want to transform your pawn into the strongest piece in the game? In what circumstances would it be useful to promote into anything else? Well today I'm going to discuss this phenomena, a concept known as underpromotion, in more detail.

What is Underpromotion?

     Underpromotion in chess occurs when a player promotes one of their pawns into anything other than the conventional queen. While fascinating, this concept is rare and seldom occurs in practice. In fact, it's so rare that the expression "queening" has been coined, a term that has become synonymous with promoting a pawn in general. Personally, throughout my two year chess career, I've never underpromoted in a game for reasons other than trolling. And that leads to the pressing question; "what is the point of underpromotion?" There are four main reasons, which I'll cover below...

Reason #1: To Avoid Stalemate

     Avoiding stalemate is the most common use of underpromotion. In situations where promoting to a queen would lead to a stalemate, rooks are often the next best choice. Observe the following example taken from the renowned Saavedra Position:

     In the above diagram white must be cautious. One wrong move and his winning advantage goes down the drain. The intuitive moves Kc5?? and Kb7?? both fail by allowing black to sack his rook for the pawn and force a draw. Thus, the only correct continuation is 2.Kb5!, fleeing for the safety of the second rank.

      I think the Saavedra Position is a very valuable example not only for understanding underpromotion, but also for learning how to avoid stalemate tricks. This was a very inconspicuous way of attempting to force stalemate so if you can memorize the solution to this position you'll be on your way to recognizing similar stalemate patterns in the endgame, even in time trouble, which should save you from losing as many full-points in the future. Let's take a look at a few more examples just to make sure I drive the point home:

     Simple enough, huh? Here's a final example before we move along to the other applications of underpromotion. As a bonus challenge, try to see if you can find the Mate-in-8.

     As you can see, underpromotion is very beneficial for eschewing your opponent's stalemate attempts. Think of all the new swindling options there'd be if pawns auto-promoted to queens. We're lucky that the ancient rules of chess are set in stone for the foreseeable future despite what all the en passant haters think

Reason #2: To Check the King

     This category is where knight promotions are most commonly found. Since the knight can move in such a unique way, it is capable of delivering check in ways that no other piece can. Thus, although the material value and scope of a knight are significantly lower than that of a queen, a knight can force the enemy king to move or even checkmate it due to its L-shaped maneuvers. This next example is taken from Jesus de la Villa's quintessential chess book 100 Endgames You Must Know, a theoretical King+Rook vs. King+Pawn endgmae.

     You'll notice that before black promoted, white had formed a mating net and was threatening checkmate if black promoted to a queen, a rook, or even a bishop. Luckily, black had the resource 6. b1=N+ up his sleeve, driving the opposing king away. Black could then convert that position into a draw by keeping the knight close to his king. In the following diagram I'll be showing a game from the 1994 Women's Candidates, and while it isn't as dramatic as the one above, it still demonstrates the force a knight possesses.

     So far I've shown how promoting into a rook can prevent stalemate and how promoting into a knight can be used to attack the king, but what about situations where you're in danger and one of the queen's subordinates is needed to salvage your king's life? That's where the next category comes into play. 

Reason #3: Defense

    The least common case of underpromotion occurs when it is used for defense and in this case, the pawn usually promotes to either a knight or a bishop. Below you'll see GM Akopian promote to a knight in order to shield his king from the enemy checks in Akopian-Karjakin 2009.

     It also may be necessary to underpromote to a knight in order to stop a knight fork from your opponent. In this game from the mid-1950s which I found in an old @Gserper article, this happened not once, but twice!

     So far I've covered how to avoid stalemate, attack the enemy king (mainly in the form of checks and checkmates, and defend your own king, all with underpromotions. Now you may be wondering what could the final case of undepromotion be? Well it's actually the most used form of underpromotion in existence: for trolling purposes.

Reason #4: Trolling

     Yes, the final and most common case of underpromotion is for trolling and/or taunting. Pretty self-explanatory. And no guide on underpromotion can be complete without mention of the grueling battle between Rybka and GM Hikaru, the Master of the Bongcloud and the King of Trolling himself.

     Enough said. Is there any practical use for this form of underpromotion? Not exactly, but it never hurts to do a little trolling

Puzzles

    Now that we've explored the four primary uses of underpromotion, it's time to test your knowledge with some puzzles.

      Now here's a more challenging one. Hint: it involves three knight underpromotions.

Conclusion

      As always thanks so much for reading; I sincerely hope that you enjoyed or at least learned something from this blog Consider leaving a comment below if you liked this post, all feedback (positive and negative) is extremely useful for my improvement as a blogger and my journey to earning Top Blogger. Per usual, big shoutout to BlogChamps, the largest club on Chess.com devoted to blogging, where members get together to read each and critique one another's blogs, and where blogging competitions judged by Top Bloggers are held. We're in our second season of competing and this is my post for the Sweet Sixteen. If any of that appeals to you, make sure to join the club Until next time,

-Nimzo