6 ms·
Is pawn promotion to rook or bishop something that is seen in play? (2012)
- beyondCritics 1y agoTim Krabbés blog is recommended for this type of question and in general: https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/minor.htm https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/minor.htm
- zzo38computer 1y agoI had known of stalemate (both causing and preventing it), but there are others as they mention there. One other I think I have read about (I do not entirely remember) is that someone promoted to rook because promotion to queen would have taken more time due to not having a extra queen to promote to so they would have to go to another table to borrow it (or ask the tournament officials for it).
- adzm 1y agoAre upside down rooks not allowed to substitute as queens?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zzo38computer 1y agoAs far as I know, it doesn't count. But, I looked it up. Apparently, it is allowed in USCF but not FIDE.
- beyondCritics 1y agoThere is also nice discussion of the beautiful and practically relevant "Saavedra position", which does have an under promotion to a rook. https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess/saavedra.htm https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess/saavedra.htm
- AtlasBarfed 1y agoThere are chess puzzlers I've seen where promoting to something besides a queen is necessary to prevent stalemate.
- zippyman55 1y agoThere are lots of situations where a promotion to a queen would result in stalemate (draw) so a promotion to rook or other piece gets away form this. I'd say Rook would be most common, but some special (problem?) positions a knight or bishop could solve the problem with a mate or a nice fork. E.g. promote to a night with check and an attack on the opponents queen.
- zippyman55 1y agoJust to pile on, a common trick is to sac a queen for say a minor piece, then after king takes queen, a pawn is promoted to a knight with check and a fork on the queen. After the dust settles, a player is up a minor piece.
- colechristensen 1y agoA knight will attack different squares than a queen so promoting to a knight of course makes obvious sense in situations that warrant. A rook or a bishop attack a subset of squares that a queen does, so why would you ever pick one of them instead of a queen? To avoid the stalemate where your opponent is not in check but has no legal moves.
- gus_massa 1y agoFor not proffesional players (i.e. me) when there are only one or two pawn and the kings, it's better to get a rock. With a queen it's too easy to make a mistake and get a draw because the other player can't move.
- le-mark 1y agoI’ve done this too often, now I always get rook unless the board is nearly empty.
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- jmclnx 1y agoI think it can happen. The big question, how often a player at a high level gets to a point where a promotion can happen ? For highly rated players, I think a resignation would occur before a promotion happens. So in general, promotions themselves are rare. Now me, the only way I would win is to promote 3 pawns to 3 queens, and even then ... :)
- neaden 1y agoThat all depends on time control. If you watch Titled Tuesday for instance you'll see plenty of games where a player promotes and their opponent doesn't concede hoping to get a stalemate or a dirty flag.
- NitpickLawyer 1y agoThere's a very chill streamer named Eric Rosen that does stalemate tricks at all levels, and it's surprising how often he gets them to work (even with super GMs from time to time).
- bluGill 1y agoResignation is a signal that you know your opponent knows how to win so why waste everyone's time playing it out. For high level players you can be confident they know how to win but there might be more than 100 moves left in the game, so not wasting time playing out a losing game is the polite thing. When playing someone low rated your opponent isn't good enough to think they can win unless there are less than 3 moves left so you may as well just play the rest of it out at that point. Even then, if you are in a simple (rook?) endgame if the low rated player makes a couple right moves you can assume they know the remaining moves so is it worth wasting your time to prove it?
- tzs 1y agoStats I’ve seen are that around 2% of games between grandmasters include a promotion. What you might be overlooking is that often the player that promotes might have temporarily given up material in order to get the promotion so it is may just be restoring approximate equality. Or it could be that the second player will also promote soon.
- jasonhong 1y agoLichess has a series of puzzles you can try where underpromotion is the theme (which is unfortunately a major giveaway to solving these puzzles, since they otherwise be rather hard to solve) https://lichess.org/training/underPromotion https://lichess.org/training/underPromotion
- dimator 1y agoIt's super exciting when it does happen, just from the rarity aspect. Here's one: https://youtu.be/z6jKBaVSOLw https://youtu.be/z6jKBaVSOLw
- mellosouls 1y agoUnder-promotion is the sort of thing streamers like ChessBrah will do to opponents who refuse to resign, just to rub their nose in it.
- dkarl 1y agoI played chess for only a few years, at a low level, and I encountered situations where underpromotion to a bishop or rook was necessary to win. It's possible it is more common at the just-above-beginner level than at the elite level, because a player in a losing position will play on longer and try to set up stalemate traps that would be pointless in higher-level games.
- Ethee 1y agoThe unspoken assumption here would be promoting to rook or bishop "instead of a queen" and as the post points out other than avoiding the stalemate situation there doesn't appear to be a logical reason for doing this.
- wat10000 1y agoIt probably wouldn’t ever happen in a real game, but I think it’s possible to be in a situation where you’re still losing after promoting to a queen, but underpromoting to a bishop forces a stalemate by leaving you with no legal moves no matter what your opponent plays in response.
- jibal 1y agoIndeed it wouldn't happen in a game but ... I easily created a position where promotion to a bishop is stalemate after any black move (confirmed by Stockfish): White pawns on a7 and b7, king on h8. Black king on f2, bishop on g3, rook on h3, knights on a6 and b8, pawns on c6, d7, f3, and h2. This position is a draw after a8=Q or axb8=Q but that is easily remedied by adding black pieces, e.g., a queen on h4.
- bluGill 1y agoThere are puzzles where only a bishop promotion wins. The others are either forced stalemate or forced draw by repitition. Finding a real game where that happens is unlikely
- dkarl 1y ago
- porkbrain 1y agoI've promoted to rook several times in over-the-board tournaments. It's easier and quieter than stopping the clock and searching for a free queen piece if your position is decisive and your opponent stubborn. Or your piece to be captured immediately. So not necessarily "cocky" as the answers suggest but rather "mindful to other players".
- jibal 1y agoWhy would you need to search for a queen piece when yours is already captured? No doubt promoting to multiple queens happens in casual games between very weak players, but extremely rarely in tournament play (where you also don't see "stubborn" players playing on in "decisive" positions unless the winning side has very little time on the clock). Also, for in-person games, an upside down rook can be used as a queen in a pinch.
- School-Cotton 1y agoTournaments doesn’t necessarily mean strong tournaments. There are tons of tournaments full of random kids and amateurs. Btw, the upside-down-rook trick is illegal in serious play.
- opello 1y agoCan you explain why that is? I'd like to believe there's a reasonable explanation. Using a proxy piece seems like an expedient, reasonable solution. A small square of paper with a Q on it?
- jibal 1y agoAs stated it's wrong--there aren't special rules for "serious play" as opposed to non-serious play. However, it's illegal under FIDE rules, but allowed under USCF rules (which cover many "serious" tournaments). And I'm amused by another response that says that it's more common than I think and then cited a case where it "almost" happened, and says "many active tournament players will see it every year or two", as if that's not "extremely rare".
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jibal 1y agoUnderpromotions to rook or bishop certainly can happen in play to avoid stalemating the opponent and preserving the win. Other reasons don't exist in play (aside from extraneous reasons like not having a queen handy or weak players underpromoting just because they are afraid of stalemating even though promoting to a queen wins) but can in compositions. e.g., here's a position that is the other way around, where promotion to a bishop is stalemate regardless of where the opponent moves and any other promotion loses: 1n6/PP1p4/n1p5/8/7q/5pbr/5k1p/7K w - - 0 1 https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/5WfasZuA6A/analysis https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/5WfasZuA6A/analysis P.S. https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/minor.htm https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/minor.htm contradicts my "Other reasons don't exist in play", assuming that the game that he analyzes actually happened, which is questionable.
- codedokode 1y agoUnexpected, I didn't think it might be worth to promote to a weaker piece. But I don't play chess since long ago.
- mithcs 1y agoHow did this question even made it to the front page?
- cwillu 1y agoWhy shouldn't it? “On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” --https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mithcs 1y agoJust was not expecting that this question would gratify intellectual curiosity of this many good hackers.
- adonovan 1y agoI have read that underpromotion can reduce the risk of immediate capture: the opponent has a bigger incentive to take a queen than, say, a rook. Seems pretty marginal to me though.
- im3w1l 1y agoIt's better to force the opponent to capture than give him the choice of capturing or doing something else. If your opponent chooses not to capture the rook it's because he has found a move he thinks is even better than taking the rook. And that move is then something you should fear. A big part of chess is maximizing your own choices and freedom while restricting your opponents choices.
- TZubiri 1y agoLevel 1, yes, this is the correct way of thinking. You should always take the highest scoring move. However, Level 2, making a decision harder for your opponent, might force them to spent more time thinking about the decision. If for some reason there is an imbalance of pondering, this might be beneficial. Suppose that you knew X position would be reached before your opponent, so you had more time to study it, you know what the correct piece to take is, whether a promoted rook, or a previously existing rook, but your opponent doesn't yet, and crowning to a queen will force your opponent into a move without a thought. The computer will sometimes do this, more because of randomness than strategy, but it is probably always the case that if they underpromote, you should take, it's like a tell of theirs. Perhaps there is a case for nash equilibirum where you must sometimes offer an underpromotion in a scenario where a queen would have been marginally better such that underpromoting doesn't signal to your opponent that they should take the piece (whichever it may be, I'm a bit dizzy) Very theoretical, but not impossible that underpromoting in such scenarios might be beneficial, that said, very theoretical.
- seanhunter 1y agoMost recreational players have probably underpromoted to a rook at some point to avoid stalemate. I do it online as a matter of course if a rook underpromotion would be immediate checkmate because a rook is all you need so why ask for more. Bishop is extremely rare but it does happen. For example there was the famous case in the US champs when Fabiano Caruana underpromoted to a bishop[1] vs Ray Robson and Robson immediaely resigned. https://youtu.be/umabaHAGmJQ?si=ETy1cAFw7ydH4MhH https://youtu.be/umabaHAGmJQ?si=ETy1cAFw7ydH4MhH [1] He didn’t have to- he just did it because he had never done it in his whole chess career
- reassess_blind 1y agoIn a losing position, I prefer under promoting to a pawn and triggering an infinite loop, buying time for a hasty escape.
- HardwareLust 1y agoFor sure it happens, just not the most common of scenarios. I see it far more often in puzzles and analysis than I do OTB.
- pull_my_finger 1y agoThere is a program called CT-Art[1], that uses "motifs" to train tactical sight for these sorts of things. Instead of next-move type puzzles where the moves are obvious, it gives you a game position several moves out from the targeted tactic, so you learn to recognize the conditions to be able to steer the game toward the tactical position. I think in it's current iteration it's broken out into separate courses or something but the older programs (v2 or v3 that I can vouch for) were really great for improving in these kinds of areas. [1]: https://chesskingtraining.com/ct-art/ https://chesskingtraining.com/ct-art/
- purpleflame1257 1y agoI had a rook under promotion happen in a real game on Lichess under time control. Queen would have stalemated, but rook was mate in 2.