No.
Why can't you promote a pawn to king?
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Does the opponent then have to checkmate both kings to win, or just one? If it was just one then forking them would do!
Lagomorph wrote:
No.
Pfft.
Promoting pawn to king would be called coup d'etat or revolution.
madhacker wrote:
Does the opponent then have to checkmate both kings to win, or just one? If it was just one then forking them would do!
No, both! (or, should I say, all)
warrior2000 wrote:
I think thats a stupid idea.....promoting to a king gives ur opp more chances to win.....
But you assume that mating one king would be the objective rather than having to mate them all.
reflectivist wrote:
Why can't you promote a pawn to king? Would that not make the game more interesting?
Why not promote silly threaders to another website
I'm going to play with that idea next time I'm with my friends in a game
According to FIDE rules you would already have lost if one of your Kings cannot escape check. So it is not clear that having an extra King would be an advantage; it might as well be a liability. In a Pawn ending it is usually a (decisive) advantage, though, as you can hardly be checked there.
I once tested how an army where the Queen was replaced by a second King would fare against an army where the Queen was simply deleted. It was almost an exact wash. (I.e. after 800 games the score did not differ significantly from 50%.)
In Spartan Chess black (the Spartans) does start with two Kings, and the rule is that white (the Persians) has to capture them both in order to win. And when one of them is already captured, the Hoplits (the Spartan equivalent of Pawns) can promote to King. Under such conditions the spare King is worth 4.5, i.e. slightly less than Rook. So if a Rook checks you, you just protect your King, and he would be unwise to capture it!
Whats next??
now_and_zen wrote:
Why can't you promote a pawn to king?
........'Cos this ain't checkers........ 
Pawns are eunichs, they dont like kings!!
Yeah, let's have two kings running a country. That sounds great. Watch Marco Polo and see how well it turns out for Khan and his bro.
Kings are eunichs, they dont like pawns!
Because the game would be a draw every time.
How would you know what the real king was. They're two look-a-like pieces.
Seems like a waste of time, money, and effort.
It seems like a waste of a penny to spend it on a sticker. It could save your life.
Why can't you promote a pawn to king? Would that not make the game more interesting?
Update 4/17/15:
As we all know, what chess needs is more complexity to keep it interesting for the SM's (e.g. s̶a̶d̶o̶m̶a̶s̶o̶c̶h̶i̶s̶t̶s̶ Super Masters).
So assume you promote pawns, you can now get kings.
*But*, you aren't allowed to *win* with more than one king on the board, you have to *demote* extraneous kings to pawns, which happens when a demoted king reaches one of the four center squares.
The center squares lose this transformative effect when there is only one king of the color on the board. This prevents a promotion/demotion cycle in one or two moves. You can't demote the last king to a pawn.