Strategy
The ability to promote is often the critical factor in endgames and thus is an important consideration in opening and middlegame strategy. Almost all promotions occur in the endgame, but promotion in the middlegame does happen.
Promotion occasionally occurs even in the opening, often after one side makes a blunder, as in the Lasker trap, which features an underpromotion to a knight on move seven: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e5 3.dxe5 d4 4.e3? Bb4+ 5.Bd2 dxe3! 6.Bxb4?? exf2+! 7.Ke2 fxg1(N)+! Schlechter vs. Perlis, Karlsbad 1911 could have featured a promotion to queen on move 11: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 Bf5 5.Qb3 Qb6 6.cxd5 Qxb3 7.axb3 Bxb1? 8.dxc6! Be4?? 9.Rxa7! Rxa7 10.c7 threatening both 11.cxb8(Q) and 11.c8(Q). Perlis avoided the trap with 8...Nxc6!, losing more slowly. The British grandmaster Joe Gallagher pulled off a similar idea a half-move earlier in Terentiev-Gallagher, Liechtenstein Open 1990: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 Ne4 3.Bf4 c5 4.c3 Qb6 5.Qb3 cxd4 6.Qxb6 axb6 7.Bxb8? dxc3 8.Be5?? Rxa2! and now White could have resigned, since if 9.Rxa2, c2 promotes (Gallagher 1996:121). Another example occurs after 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dex4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Ng3 h5 6.Bg5?! h4 7.Bxf6?? hxg3 8.Be5 Rxh2! 9.Rxh2 Qa5+! 10.c3 Qxe5+! 11.dxe5 gxh2, with the dual threat of 12...hxg1(Q) and 12...h1(Q), as in Schuster-Carls, Bremen 1914 and NN–Torre, Mexico 1928 (Burgess 1998:72). Note that 10.Qd2 (instead of 10.c3) would have been met by 10...exf2+! 11.Kd1 (11.Kxf2 Qxd2+) Qxd2+ 12.Kxd2 fxg1(Q) rather than 10...Qxe5 11.dxe5 gxh2 12.Nf3 h1(Q) 13.0-0-0 with a strong attack (Neishtadt 1996:94–96).
P. Short vs. Daly, Irish championship 2006| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | ||
| 8 | 8 | ||||||||
| 7 | 7 | ||||||||
| 6 | 6 | ||||||||
| 5 | 5 | ||||||||
| 4 | 4 | ||||||||
| 3 | 3 | ||||||||
| 2 | 2 | ||||||||
| 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h |
There are also a few opening lines where each side gets a desperado pawn that goes on a capturing spree, resulting in each side queening a pawn in the opening. An example is seen in the position at right, where play continued 10...bxc3 11.exf6 cxb2 12.fxg7 bxa1(Q) 13.gxh8(Q).
Both players promoted by White's seventh move in Casper vs. Heckert: 1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e5 d4 4.exf6 dxc3 5.d4 cxb2 6.fxg7 bxa1(Q) 7.gxh8(Q).
Read more about this topic: Promotion (chess)
Famous quotes containing the word strategy:
“To a first approximation, the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states exhibiting what Brentano and others call intentionality.”
—Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)
“Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.”
—Colin Powell (b. 1937)
“... the generation of the 20’s was truly secular in that it still knew its theology and its varieties of religious experience. We are post-secular, inventing new faiths, without any sense of organizing truths. The truths we accept are so multiple that honesty becomes little more than a strategy by which you manage your tendencies toward duplicity.”
—Ann Douglas (b. 1942)