Chess construction challenge: Worst promotion move

I’ve been thinking about a chess construction puzzle lately.

Can you create a position where promoting a white pawn to

1. Queen
2. Knight
3. Bishop
4. Rook

would draw or lose, but there would be a better outcome if the pawn promoted to any of the other 3 pieces? With best play from both sides, the outcome for promoting to each of the other 3 pieces must be the same (all 3 would win or draw for white), but promoting to that specific piece is worse (it would lose, or draw if the other promotions win).

If you don’t understand what I mean, I’ll give you an example, where only queen promotion draws for white, whereas other promotions win. Some promotions from the 3 best ones might do better than others, but as long as they still lead into the same outcome, that position is acceptable.

Since I’ve given one example where the queen promotion is worst, you could try the challenge with the other pieces. Good luck!

Here is one where promoting to a knight is the only losing promotion for White:

-> and -> are trickier.

Thanks! I also struggled with rook and bishop promotion losing the game as I found it hard to make the knight promotion winning. Your positions work nicely for each promotion, and are much better than my attempts. Good job!

I have also mentioned that the 3 promotions could draw instead (whereas the 4th still loses), so how about the same challenge, but the best outcome is a draw? I don’t think making the queen promotion losing is possible (unless you can prove me wrong), but the other 3 options are still available.

I've got a funny one based on my game; Both promoting to a queen AND bishop lose. Promoting to a rook is the fastest way, and the horse is...horse

Technically, the queen and bishop don’t lose, they just draw, although that is a cool position you got there! But for this challenge, there is only one sole worst promotion move, whereas in your position both queen and bishop promotion blunder. You might want to see some of the diagrams that @KlekleLegacy has created in the above posts to get the idea with this thread.

There is already a "worst move" type in existence which applies to all possible moves not just to promotions. The first example would work as a generalized "worst move" if not one other move draws as well: 1. Kg5! which is easily repairable e.g. by adding wPc3. The question is "is it worth splitting off the worst promotion type from the worst move type when the latter clearly covers a lot more terrain?"

Note that there is another interesting point I made some years ago in relation to the worst move type. Suppose there are a black and white pawn on the board in an "e.p. relationshop". Is it allowed to play e.p. as a worst move even when the right is not provable? After all, it is the worst possible move in the worst possible history!

I prefer to stick with the worst promotion type as I wanted to see how people could make the 4th promotion lose/draw while avoiding defeat for the other three promotions. But the wide variety for considering the worst move in general has already got me interested and I might add that as another challenge on this thread!