Best Pawn Promotion Rule?

We all know the rule - A player MUST promote a pawn reaching the 8th rank to a Q, K, B, or R of the same color.

Personally, I side with Philidor who thought the idea of having 2 queens was ridiculous. He prefered the idea of only promoting to an already captured piece. Which seems more reasonable.

I'm perplexed why the makers of the current rule thought having 2 queens or whatever was fine, but then disallowed not promoting at all (remaining a pawn) and promoting to an opposite color piece (which is rare cases can win). How is having fewer options better???

I've read it was once suggested that a pawn should only be able to promote to the piece of it's original file. Now that would be interesting... the K's pawn would be worthless, while the Q's pawn becomes more valuable. Assuming a second King couldn't be created (although allowing that would also be interesting).

In any case if I were in charge, I would have made the rule "a player can promote to any captured piece of either color, or remain a pawn." 

Thoughts?

I like the idea of only being able to promote to an already captured piece. It would be a lot more interesting than just promoting to a queen every time.

Thoughts? I think you're a tad crazy to criticize the current rules for limiting options while you yourself propose that we can't promote to anything that isn't captured.

Under the current rule, you could theoretically have 9 Queens. Under that same rule, you can't remain a pawn or promote to an oppisite color. That's ridiculous.

"Anything goes!!! Except for a few minor options." 

Yes, because a pawn can do soooooo many things once it's at the end of the board. :P

There was one stupid problem where something like 1. wPf8=wP! was needed to force a stalemate...

If a player can find a useful time to remain a  pawn for his advantage (albeit extremerly rare), why not? How does that being illegal make the game better?

So 9 Queens is reasonable, but a non-promoting pawn somehow goes against the spirit of the game? That's insane.

...or we could simply leave alone what's already been proven to work just fine... If it aint broke, don't fix it.

I have an opposite view. Usually a pawn can only be promoted due to the player's clever play. What's wrong with rewarding him with the most powerful piece on board ?

Then why not the most important piece - An extra King? Seems just as reasonable to me as having multiple Queens.

Regardless of which rule people prefer - promoting to only captured versus only Q, K, B, or R... is there any good reason for not allowing a piece to remain a pawn?  That makes no sense to me.

I can sort of understand not being able to promote to oppisite color (I completely disagree, but I can see the reasoning), but an 8th rank pawn can't remain a pawn? Why not?

There was another thread on this... A FIDE rule overturned this original rule, but there was once an option for a8=Black Knight.

I do not believe I have ever had the need to underpromote.

if they added the rule that you can remain a pawn, I am confident I would never have to use this rule for the rest of my life.

Dont forget about the player on the receiving end. "limiting" the option to only promote to pieces and not pawns then expands his tactical options as well. So your complaint is one sided.

Anyway, why fuss over something that would destroy 200 hundred years of chess for possibilities 99% of us would never use anyway. Promoting to my enemies piece...yeah thats gonna happen real soon.

I hate to play devil's advocate for such a ridiculous topic, but there are many situations where remaining a pawn would be an advantage. A quick example I just cobbled together, white to play and draw.

Solution: 1. h8=wP!! any, stalemate. If any other promotion, 1...c6 and 2...Kc7#.

NOTE: I still think that changing the promotion rule would be stupid and utterly unnecessary. Just showing that it's never as clear-cut as it would "never" be of use to promote to stupid pieces.

when i was a kid, i was taught that i could only promote my pawn to a piece that has been taken off the board, so in other words no 2 queens, etc.

Trolls are immortal.

Maybe I'm wrong, but if a legal move "can" be made then it must be made. Thus even if you could leave a pawn unpromoted, with that being the only option it would still have to promote.

Hey Snook, maybe you should look into Shogi (Japanese Chess) instead of international chess. You still can not promote to your opponents color, but you don't have to promote AND you can drop captured pieces as your own on any turn anwhere on the board as long as it does not create an instant mate. It is by far a more complex game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi

I'm not going to argue about the rules surrounding underpromoting to a pawn (that's just plain fairy chess and silly.) But I will argue about shogi, as I also take that fairly seriously.

Your description of shogi is wrong. Firstly the pieces only nominally have "colour" (they are differentiated based on the direction they point.) Secondly, their "promotion" is a completely different concept from chess; any piece except the king and golds can promote when any part of their move coincides with the last 3 ranks of the board from your view, and there is no choice of promoted piece, as every piece has a fixed promoted variation.

Thirdly, you must promote when the piece you moved has no legal moves after completing the move, for example a pawn or lance to the last rank, or a keima (knight) to the second last or last rank. Fourthly, you can drop pieces that you captured on the board as a move into any legal position (EVEN as a mating move) except where dropping a pawn would cause mate, or dropping a pawn onto a file with another of your unpromoted pawns.

So yeah, please don't try to complicate matters by bringing up an entirely different board game where you're not familiar with the rules. Especially where it's one which I play and happen to like almost more than international chess.

This thread didn't go the way I intended. I thought players would have a preference to which of the various promotion rules they would have selected if it were up to them.

Instead I read "the current rule is perfect because it's old", and "how dare you not love all chess rules", and "amatures are too stupid to discuss chess", etc.

Nobody even offered the logic behind not being able to stay a pawn or promoting to opposite color other than "the possibility of it helping is low, so shut up about it."

I thought this thread would be a hypothetical discussion of interesting promotion rules and/or why the rules are as they exist. Please forgive me for being a lowely amature and trying to create an interesting discussion. It'll never happen again.

Complicate matters? This is all like you said "fairy chess" and "silly" so I merely offered an option to look at something flavored diferently. No, I didn't go into specifics about when or how a pawn promotes because the point is as soon as a pawn is eligible to promote it doesn't have to. Yes, almost every piece can promote, but what was the scope of my message? I can argue you have no concept of Shogi since you forgot to mention that castling is also a completely diferent concept from chess in that with shogi the art of castling is the central focus of the early stages of the game consisting of well planned and placed pieces making a fortress of pieces surrounding the king instead of a single move. It's presumptuous for you to assume I don't know anything about the game simply because I didn't lay out the entire formula of play for a game that I do love way more than chess.

BTW, this is my favorite quote:
you can drop pieces that you captured on the board as a move into any legal position (EVEN as a mating move) except where dropping a pawn would cause mate

LOL, you can drop the piece to cause check, but not mate ;) should I argue that it's you that doesn't know how to play, or would it be better to assume symantics?

Snook: the best I can come up with for "why" the pawn has to promote when it reaches the last rank is simply that the pawn is a forward moving piece so when it reaches the last rank it has nowhere else to go. If it doesn't promote at that moment then it technically can never promote since it takes "movement" to promote. Consider, if the pawn was already on the last rank when it became your turn, do you promote only or promote and still get to move? The first isn't really a turn since no piece moved and the second seems to place an unfair advantage in what becomes an effectively camouflaged piece. I mean, where can your opponent move their pieces and not be in danger of the hidden "potential" of your pawn. Considering whether the pawn becomes a queen or a knight, you can have completely diferent attacking options and that seems to go beyond the scope of international chess.

I quote from wikipedia (AND I've been playing shogi OTB and online for years now):

A pawn cannot be dropped to give an immediate checkmate. (Although other pieces may be dropped to give immediate checkmate.)

You CAN drop any piece except a pawn to create mate. Why else do you think "gold-on-the-head", "silver-on-the-head", and other types of dropping mates exist? The rule you're thinking of is for bughouse international chess, not shogi. Please read up.

As for castling, it is not a move in shogi, nor is it part of the rules. I was pointing out the rules, specifically with regard to promotion (and your misconception about dropped mates.) One can play with a sitting king just as one may choose not to castle in chess, but it's all apples and oranges in any case.

I play on 81dojo as well, a mere 7-kyu there but I never lose games because of illegal moves. And I can win games by dropping mate too.

Also slightly more on topic, in shogi promotion is not compulsory because all pieces can promote in, move in, out and within of the promotion zone as it is larger. In international chess, only the lowly pawn (which can't even go sideways) can promote, and only on the eighth, where it would have no legal move otherwise.