Chess Patterns   ❯   Tactical Patterns | One-Idea Tactics   ❯   Underpromotion

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Underpromotion

Underpromotion

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The Underpromotion tactic is a maneuver in which you promote one of your pawns to a piece other than a Queen, such as a Knight, Rook, or Bishop. In the diagram above, if White promotes the e7-pawn to a Queen with 1.e8=Q, Black can win immediately with 1...Qg2#. Instead, White chooses to underpromote to a Knight with 1.e8=N, forking the black King and Queen, and then proceeds to play a winnable endgame.

The main reasons for underpromotions are to achieve a Knight fork (as in the above example) or to avoid stalemate.

Master Underpromotions

While creating Chess With Cards, we watched many videos and read a lot of books. Here's our curated selection of the best resources we encountered on Underpromotion tactics. We also included some smaller creators who are growing fast and we believe deserve your attention. Check out these resources if you want to master this tactical pattern.

 
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