[HN Gopher] Is pawn promotion to rook or bishop something that i...
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Is pawn promotion to rook or bishop something that is seen in play?
(2012)
Author : susam
Score : 49 points
Date : 2025-10-01 20:48 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (boardgames.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (boardgames.stackexchange.com)
| beyondCritics wrote:
| Tim Krabbes blog is recommended for this type of question and in
| general: https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/minor.htm
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I 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).
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| There are chess puzzlers I've seen where promoting to something
| besides a queen is necessary to prevent stalemate.
| zippyman55 wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| Just 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 wrote:
| A 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 wrote:
| For 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.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| There'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 wrote:
| Resignation 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?
| jasonhong wrote:
| Lichess 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
| dimator wrote:
| It's super exciting when it does happen, just from the rarity
| aspect. Here's one: https://youtu.be/z6jKBaVSOLw
| mellosouls wrote:
| Under-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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| It 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.
| porkbrain wrote:
| [delayed]
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