Promotion Puzzles

A pawn on the seventh rank is worth more than most pieces — if it gets to the eighth. Promotion puzzles are about making that happen by force: clearing the path, winning the race, or sacrificing everything else because a new queen pays for it all.

The signature theme is the breakthrough: a wall of pawns faces a wall of pawns, and a sacrifice — sometimes two — punches a single runner through while the defender's captures pull his pawns out of the race. Add escort technique (rook behind the passer, king shouldering the enemy king away) and deflection of the blockading piece, and you have most of the genre.

Then there is the underpromotion — chess's finest punchline. Sometimes the new queen loses to a skewer or walks into stalemate, and the winning move is a knight that arrives with check, or a rook or bishop chosen precisely because it does NOT give stalemate. Real games produce these more often than you would think.

Race positions reward exact counting: whoever queens first, or queens with check, takes everything. Count tempi, not hopes.

Solve the real-game puzzle on this page, then train promotions in the trainer at your level.