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Promotion?
From: jetfighter13
My question is, when is it ok to underpromote, I sometimes do, but only when I even/win material, or put my opponent in check.
To help illustrate my point, I offer the following game:
Dear jetfighter13,
Under-promotion is an interesting concept in chess. It is not very common, but when used appropriately, it can be very useful. This is also something you would not want to do without a very good reason. The concept of under-promotion is like your boss asking you to take a promotion in your job and you refusing it. You would never do such a thing unless something worse is going to come out of that promotion that would outweigh all the positive factors.
It is always nice to have examples and I am glad you provided one with your question. We will first establish some pointers that can help us decide if an under-promotion is a good thing to do and then we can evaluate the under-promotion in your game.
Under-promotion would be a very good thing to do if one of the two following conditions were to be true:
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If the piece you are planning to under-promote is going to be of more use than a queen. In this case the under promotion obviously has to be knight, because a queen can also move like a bishop and a rook.
Promot knight for check vs. ? -
If promoting to a queen is going to make the situation worse. The main cause for such a situation would be a possibility of stalemate.
I hope these pointers and the examples give you a clear idea of when you would want to under-promote. Now think about the under-promotion from your game. As you had mentioned in your comment, it is definitely a cool thing to do, but it was not really necessary. However it was not bad either since in this case it did not matter what you promoted that pawn into, it was just about to be captured anyways.
Comments:
Compare this "article" to ANY article written by Gserper,and you will know what i really think about it. Anyone above 1600 could write it in less than 5 minutes.
Here's another example of unnecessay underpromotions by a GM. Mate in 271. Rybka vs Hikaru Nakamura: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1497429
http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=43275331
Tons of horrible blunders but at the end there is a nice trap that is averted by underpromotion
@zezpwn44 You forgot the "underpromote to subtly notify your opponent that it's time to resign," though this probably doesn't come up in high-level chess.
http://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/records/
White to play
Serper - Navrotescu
Oakham 1988
Black had just played 46...g1R That Rook promotion was not forced (46...Ra1 was a quicker win), but as 46...g1Q 47.Rh7+ would have been stalemate, it was more than a joke. White resigned.
In the first game, I reckon 19. Rxf7 might have made things interesting in a live chess game. Re7 as a response won't work as I reckon Bxg5+ would put his king in danger. Rh8 is a possibility but leaves a pawn hanging and still gives white some good chances
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