Pawn Promotion Is Ridiculous

LOL you are the one who wants easy chess, by wanting to decide for your opponent what pieces they can promote to. The position being unrealistic claim is ridiculous. Top level games the pieces can end up in almost sorts of weird positions and underpromotions happen at top level too. A rule has to apply to all positions, not just the "realistic ones". If you checked out my underpromotion thread, you will see underpromotion problems/duplicate promotions can arise from very realistic endgames and positions. But that's besides the point. I don't see the logic of why your version is more strategic. If anything, having to consider the results of more possible pieces a pawn can promote to makes the game more complex. I mean you are saying a pawn couldn't promote at all if one of each piece was on the board? What happens then? They just become props on the 8th rank, or stale on the 7th rank unable to move? Your logic is akin to saying we shouldn't be able to capture our opponents pieces with certain pieces depending on how many of each piece both sides have. Chess is not a material count game, it is a game of position and checkmate.

Actually that is completely wrong. A game with more queens is harder as you have to take into account all the squares they can move to and all the potential tactics, perpetual checks, skewers, and interactions with other pieces. A knight and bishop vs a knight and bishop can't do that much. For example, tablebases show that in positions with QRKQRK, the first player to move wins 76% of the time. In fact it's harder to find positions where it's a dead draw as the pieces are so powerful. KNKB on the other hand blundering into a checkmate is virtually impossible as the players would have to cooperate in setting up the checkmate. 2 queens vs 2 queens there is some game left. With a knight and bishop vs a knight and bishop, not so much.

If white promotes to a queen here there is plenty of play left in the position, if white promotes to anything else, even a bishop, black will win this with ease.

Again bro, taking one position (that too, a totally impossible one) out of millions, isn't going to prove a potential rule good or bad.

[Removed: please remain courteous! - DB]

Well since you didn't *win* the argument at all you can't really make a claim about the person you're arguing with. Your totally impossible claim shows your lack of knowledge of the game of chess. It is possible for both sides to have 9 queens and 2 rooks, me and a few friends constructed these games in other threads, let alone the simple position I posted above. Your criteria that a position is also nonsense and unrealistic if white has a pawn on the 7th rank while having 2 knights on the board, is trolling. The fact that you can't even conceive of how a pawn might make it to the 7th rank in a chess game while other pieces are near it speaks volumes. "There are pieces near the pawn so there's no way it could have made it that far" is the most simpleton reasoning I have ever read. Maybe the position was more complicated to start with and it traded down to that. You have no idea what moves preceded the final position. Games with 2 queens are not "out of millions". They happen frequently and pawns reaching the 7th rank happen much more frequently than that.

Earlier there was a rule that you could not have two queens because that would be bigamy, and a pawn could instead promote to a vizier/minister (same capabilities as a queen but avoiding the bigamy argument). I can accept the limitation to no more than 1 queen, 2 knights, 2 bishops and 2 rooks as long as there was no limit on the number of ministers (queen power), squires (knight power), cardinals (bishop power) and siege towers (rook power) that pawns could promote to.

PS There are standard opening traps that involve an early pawn promotion to a knight (with check) where promoting to something else is much worse for the promoting players.

What next? Only allow a bishop promotion if the promotion square is the opposite color of the bishop already on the board. So promoting to 2 knights, 2 bishops, AND 2 rooks is fine, but promoting to 3 knights isn't. The lack of logic in this thread is astounding.

Why are you talking like everything in chess should make sense? Does en passant make sense? Does castling make sense? No. These are the rules formed to bring balance in chess and be able to come up with more efficient tactics.

En passant does make sense. It gives pawns at least 1 chance to capture a neighboring pawn if it moves, but only for the first move since it's not a standard capture. It evens out and it makes endgames more Strategic. Otherwise the side either a pawn majority on one side would always win, making chess to easy and simple. Castling out of or through check is debatable, but at least its consistent with en passant in that squares your pieces pass through affects the move. The reason I brought up the opposite colored bishops thing was to show the inconsistency in the suggestion. It doesn't make sense for someone who's complaining about too many pawns being able to turn into pieces, to say that 6 pieces are OK as long as they are all different, but 3 of the same pieces is not. It's much easier to win with 2 rooks than 3 knights. The strategy argument fails here. Even without this aspect, the rule would make no sense. A pawn can promote to any piece, why should there be a numerical limit? It's akin to saying a player shouldn't be allowed to make 5 consecutive knight moves at any point in the game, or not be allowed to visit the same square more than once.

Bro leave this guy, he's a troll. He doesn't really know what he's talking about. He's just someone who would accept anything from a higher rank, even if it doesn't make sense. Even, let's say my version of chess was the standard chess rule and I tried to make a suggestion of "promoting pawns to many queens", he'd again be the guy to defend it and not question anything but will bash the suggestion given that opposes one of the rules of chess. At least, if it was in that case, he'd would make somewhat sense. But right now, he's just blindly and sheepishly defending one of the current rules of chess.

Actually, the idea of changing the rules of chess by creating a thread on chess.com is what is ridiculous. If you want to change the rules then get involved with FIDE and make a proposal to FIDE's Rules Commission at http://rules.fide.com/ for any chance of getting anywhere.

If you don't want to do that then you are not serious about changing the rules, but are rather pushing for a limited-promotion variant of chess. If that is what you want to do then state it clearly and people can focus on the variant as opposed to shooting down a pie-in-the-sky idea.

Continuing to advocate for a change in the rules without taking even the barest minimum step to actually do so makes the original post look like trolling.

I agree just check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cTSXmxci_0

Mate what, who do you think I am? Some kind of a crazy activist who's demanding to change sh*ts?. I just wanna have a discussion with the chess community about the flaws of chess. Am I not allowed?

You're the troll. You started a thread on a ridiculous rule change, others have a right to disagree with it. That's the point of a forum, troll. Defend why that should be the rule change if you believe in it so much. Again I ask, how does it make sense to allow a player who has 6 pawns left to promote to 2 rooks, 2 bishops, and 2 knights, but not let a player with 3 pawns left promote to only 3 knights? How does it make sense to determine whether a pawn can move to an empty square or not, based on how many other pieces are on the board. These 2 questions have gone unanswered for 5 pages.

Well @EndgameEnthusiast2357 , How about you tell me how promoting 3 pawns to 3 knights make sense at all. Did the 3rd knight spawn out of nothingness.

And if I have all my Knights, Bishops, Rooks, and Queen?

I gave an example already, this endgame:

If white promotes to anything else, he loses one of his knights next move after having to block Qd1+, and KQNKQ is extremely drawish. And there is nothing outrageously unrealistic about this position either. He didn't say 3 pawns couldn't promote to 3 knights, he said even 1 pawn wouldn't be allowed to promote a knight of the original knight was still on the board. The limit was 2 of each piece total, not how many pawns could promote to it.

And again I told you picking 1 position out of billions isn't gonna prove your point. I doubt if such a position would be found, even in a 100 rated game.

You're seriously claiming a queen vs 2 knights and 1 pawn endgame has never happened? You asked why would someone ever want to promote to a 3rd knight, and I gave an example. Here's an even more realistic one that was covered in a gothamchess video, from a real high level game. Don't remember the exact position, but the concept was this:

Promoting to a knight is the only move that prevents the newly promoted piece from being forked, and other other move allows black to win the pawn, which would be a dead draw.