Underpromotion, En passant&Castling

I have decided to create a thread broadcasting three chess rules...underpromotion, en passant, and castling. I assume most players are familiar with all of these "special" moves. However, I must admit I don't see underpromotion very often unless you are trying to avoid a draw. And, whenever there is an en passant move, people seem to immediately take advantage of en passant instinctively instead of looking around the chessboard for better moves. So, in this thread, I'm going to provide positions for these two categories where you have to decided which piece to promote to, and another category in which you decide if you should en passant or not. Many people have mentioned that in Tactics Trainer that, if en passant is avilable, it is usually the best move. This is why some people might have the habit of instinctually moving en passant.

Category 1: Promotions

Decide what piece to promote to in the following positions. Positions get harder as they go on.

I've found that computers -- at least the early programs -- will almost always make an en passant capture whenever the opportunity presents itself. I attribute this to the programmer showing off: he (or she) wants the user to say "Wow!  It even knows that obscure rule."

(I'm a programmer, so I know the feeling.)

;)

Low-rated players who have newly learned the en-passant rule usually play it for similar reasons ;-)

That kinda' wierd, iz a de-programmer and i don't know da' feeling..

Guys I'm working on the post right now. 'hold on please.

Plus, whenever en passant is available, it's hardly ever a bad move, even if it's not the best move.

I am used to playing in person rather than online for the most part, so I am very much used to underpromotion because of there not being two queens of the same color included in a set. Underpromotion is nice because of knights being one of the most unique pieces in the game might occasionally be needed to play a faster checkmate, but it seems very circumstancial. I personally do see the usefullness of en passant but I keep forgetting on which row it actually applies, which is why it annoys me. I feel that in general it is a very trivial part of chess. Castling on the other hand I feel is more useful, especially for development and also as a tactic to throw off an attack, because moving the king moves the target. Castling to me also produces interesting games, but I feel it is overused. I occasionally use castling to make my rooks more productive, but occasionally expose my king by accident instead. There are ways to defend the king with a more central position.

All in all I feel good basics is better than knowing about these special moves.

Study the Saavedra position and you will easily come to understand how an underpromotion to a rook or a bishop may be beneficial.

Well, that's quite a bit of a fallacious generalization, which actually is less-than-trivial to rebut.

jadarite,

You won't be needing a Rook or Bishop for its power, but rather the opposite! Sometimes a new Queen would control too many squares, and you would stalemate the opponent (or allow him/her to engineer a stalemate), thus getting only a draw despite your Pawn promotion.  If you can't defer the promotion until your opponent has minimal breathing room, you may get by with an underpromotion, something that I suspect jaas is illustrating for you.