The Pawn
The pawn is the only piece that moves one way and captures another, never turns round, and can stop being a pawn altogether. Three rules in one small piece - so the boards below make you use all three.
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A pawn is worth one point, moves one square, and is the piece that decides most games. That is not a paradox: it is because the pawn is the only piece that can stop being itself.
Its rules split into three, and the boards below take them one at a time. Start with the move, which has a wrinkle on the very first go.
One pawn, still on its starting square. Push it as far as it is allowed to go.
The two-square move is the pawn's only piece of generosity and it is offered exactly once. It is also the move that makes en passant possible, which is the one rule written to answer it.
The move and the capture are different directions
This is the sentence that trips up every new player, so it is worth putting in a table before you try it:
| what the pawn does | which way |
|---|---|
| moves | straight forward, one square (two on its first move) |
| captures | one square diagonally forward |
| retreats | never - there is no such move |
So a piece standing directly in front of a pawn is not in danger from that pawn at all. It is doing something worse to it: it is stopping it dead. A pawn with an enemy piece in front of it cannot move at all unless something appears on one of its diagonals.
Here is exactly that position. Three black pawns, one straight ahead and one on each diagonal.
Three black pawns: d5, e5, f5. Take one of them - and notice which one you cannot touch.
Two pawns facing each other like this are locked: neither can move forward, and neither threatens the other. That is how pawn chains form, and it is why an apparently even position can be completely frozen down the middle.
The walk to the far side
Every pawn is a queen that has not arrived yet.
When a pawn reaches the eighth rank - the first rank, if you are Black - it does not stop there. It comes off the board and is replaced on that square by a queen, rook, bishop or knight of your colour, chosen by you, immediately, as part of the same move.
This pawn is one square from the end. Play the move.
Two things people get wrong about promotion:
- You are not limited to pieces you have lost. Nothing in the rules connects the two. If you walk three pawns home you may have three queens.
- You must promote. There is no option to leave it as a pawn on the eighth rank - a pawn there would have no legal move at all, which is why the rules do not allow it.
Underpromotion - choosing a rook, bishop or knight instead - is rare but real. The knight is the one that comes up, because it is the only piece that moves in a way a queen cannot: a promotion to a knight can give check, or fork a king and a queen, on the move it arrives.
Why a pawn move is the one you cannot take back
Every other piece can go back where it came from. A knight that jumps out can jump home; a rook can return down the file. A pawn cannot, ever.
That single fact is behind most positional advice you will ever read. Pushing a pawn permanently gives up the squares it used to guard, and permanently fixes the ones it now sits on. It is the only move in chess with no undo built into the rules of the game itself, so it is the move to be slowest about.
Try it
This pawn has already left its starting square and is standing on e4. Move it.
Common questions
- How does a pawn move in chess?
- Straight forward, one square at a time, and never backwards. On its very first move - and only then - it may go two squares instead of one. It captures differently: one square diagonally forward, which is the only direction it can ever take a piece in.
- Can a pawn move backwards?
- No. The pawn is the only piece in chess that cannot reverse, and that is what makes every pawn move permanent. A square you push a pawn past is a square it can never guard again, which is why pawn moves are the ones worth thinking hardest about.
- Can a pawn take a piece directly in front of it?
- No, and this catches almost everyone once. A pawn only captures diagonally. A piece standing directly in front of a pawn is not threatened by it at all - it is blocking it, and the pawn cannot move at all until that square clears.
- When can a pawn move two squares?
- Only from its starting square, and only if both squares in front of it are empty. Once a pawn has moved even one square it advances one at a time for the rest of the game. The two-square move is also the one that makes an en passant capture possible.
- What happens when a pawn reaches the other side?
- It promotes: it comes off the board and is replaced immediately by a queen, rook, bishop or knight of your own colour. You are not limited to pieces you have already lost, so two or three queens at once is entirely legal. Nearly everyone takes the queen, since she is worth the most.
- How many pawns does each player have?
- Eight, filling the whole second rank in front of the other pieces - sixteen pawns on the board at the start. Each one is worth about a point, which sounds like nothing until you remember that each one is also a queen that has not arrived yet.
