Pawn promotion.

I played my Dad the other day and he was telling me that in old school chess you weren't able to promote a pawn unless the piece you wanted to promote to had been captured.

Has any one heard of this before ?

Does any one still play this way ?

And when did the rule change so you're able to promote as many pawns as possible to which ever piece you'ld like ?

It's best to think of the rule as promotion, not replacement.  The pawn's movement and capture abilities are promoted to a queen's (or any other piece besides a king).  This is one of those common confusions just like can a pinned piece check and can your rook move through an attacked square in legal castling (the answer to both are yes).

Thanks for the info' all, you've been very helpful : )

we played that way when i was a kid, but it was just because the chess set only had one queen for each color and we didn't have any bottle caps.

Yes, many sets come with extra queens.  I also have a few sets like that.

When I was a kid, there was this other kid who insisted that the way you set up the pieces, the white queen got her color, but the black king and queen were not opposite white's (black king on d8, queen on e8).  I tried to say it was wrong, but he said he was right because that's how his dad taught him.

I've had a few amateurs tell me about a funny chess program glitch when their computer cheated by making a capture en-passant.  Of course they didn't say "en-passant" they called it "their pawn suddenly disappeared cheating."

There are many confusions in the rules, but like the others I highly doubt it's because of some archaic rule only chess historians know about.

There is also some confusion about the 50 moves rule. Once a guy told me it was only 21 moves.

Other guys would also try to castle while checked or to pass trough attacked squares with their kings.

It is very anoying when someone doesn't know basic rules and says that you are cheating. The best part of playing chess in the Internet is that there is no confusion about rules.

i am still fuzzy on the 50 move rule.  once i read it had something to do with 50 moves without "something to do with pawns" i figured it was far enough beyond my level that i don't need to know it right now.  if i get to a game that is well over 50 moves i will look it up. 

Just think of it as 50 non-pawn moves without a capture.

Either the act of capturing or the act of moving a pawn will reset the count.

Heh, or the people that think that if you leave your king in check they can capture it and win the game.  Once I put this guy in check (of course without saying check) and after a little bit he noticed and commented about how I was pretty sneaky, hoping he didn't see the check and trying to win like that... lol

thanks honda, but i cannot imagine a game where that would be possible. 

Depending upon your age, your Dad may tell you it was different when he was younger ...

"In the 20th century it was discovered that some positions of certain endgames can only be won in more than fifty moves (without a capture or a pawn move). The rule was changed to include certain exceptions in which one hundred moves were allowed with particular material combinations. However, more and more exceptions were discovered and in 1992 FIDE abolished all such exceptions and reinstated the strict fifty-move rule." 

Actually, when I was a kid I played in a tournament where such rules were in effect: if your opponent didn't notice he was in check, you could capture his king and win the game. It cost me my first game when I didn't know this rule and kindly reminded my opponent that the move he was attempting was illegal because he was in check, and he went on to win.

Its rather annoying for a tournament player to play with recreational/social players because very often the latter do not know all the rules and the former has become a stickler about such rules..... I have played with some who had no idea what capturing en passant was , others didnt believe you could have more than one queen on the board of the same color, others didnt believe you could castle if you had ever been checked during the game.... the list goes on an on and when I tried to help them learn the rules of the game was sometimes accused of making them up to suit myself and/or challenged to produce a book of rules to back me up. Eventually I just quit playing such players because the games werent challenging anyway and I didnt like such confrontations about the "real rules" ....

I played a local pub "champ" one time who didn't know the en passant rule. Red faces all around and not from the grog!

Are you saying you can't imagine a game where 50 moves occur without a pawn move or any captures being possible? Well, something like King + Knight + Bishop vs King can checkmate but if you don't know the way to do it, without mistakes, then you can easily spend more than 50 moves trying to. There are other endgames that are similar. That endgame can take up to 33 moves with perfect play from any starting configuration.

i meant that i can't really imagine at my level.  nor, since i play for fun, can i imagine either myself or my opponent piddling away 50 moves before we called a draw and moved on (since i obviously don't know how to play perfectly or force mate in 33). i guess to be more clear i should have said "i can't imagine needing to put it in practice" or something of the sort.  perhaps i will improve to the point that i can imagine it. 

i am aware that there are many players who do have the ability and patience for these things to be important.