Of all the chess pieces, the pawn has the least amount points, or should I say point. It is worth 1 point but all in all you have 8 points for pawns since there are 8 of them. At first glance it would look as if the pawn is a weak piece and not worth looking after. But if you study chess carefully, the pawn plays a very important role like ground soldiers in a war. Tanks and missiles pave the way but it is the soldiers that secure the territory. Same with pawns.
Both white and black have 8 initial pawns. Their formation at the beginning of the game would something like below:
Initial Pawn Formation
The pawn can:
- move forward one square
- move forward two squares
- move forward diagonally to capture an enemy piece
- move forward diagonally to capture an enemy pawn en passant
- be promoted into a new piece once it reaches the eighth row
Let us take at each of the items above.
Normally, the pawn only moves one square at a time. However, it could move two squares if it hasn’t moved before. On the other hand, pawns capture other pieces diagonally. So if any enemy piece is to its diagonal left or right (one diagonal square away), it can capture that enemy piece. Best of all, the pawn has the ability to be promoted into a new piece once it reaches last row of the chess board or the row where all the enemy chess officials are (we will talk about this in another post).
The other move the pawn can make is called the en passant. To illustrate better, please look at the image below:
Black moves 2 squares and bypasses the white pawn. White can capture the black piece and move forward diagonally as if the black pawn only moved forward one square.
The en passant move can only be done when an enemy pawn moves forward 2 squares and bypasses its enemy pawn.
Tags: en passant, pawn, pawn moves
Hey, nice post, really well written. You should post more about this.
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