enslaved, dictated lifestyle and over-worked were the initial thoughts that sprung to mind, I too now shared a similar stance to Marilyn, I wonder if and how the role of women in society influenced the development of the chess queen. Once I read this I began thinking about the role of women during the medieval times. How did she come to dominate the chessboard when, in real life, women are almost always in a position of secondary power?'. The first segment to Marilyns thesis which caught my eye was in the introduction where she wrote:'.I became fascinated with the chess queen as an icon of female power. There are many online reviews and references to Ms Yaloms book: The Birth of the Chess Queen including on, if you have not been introduced to an insightful informational walkthrough of female monarchs influence on chess, then allow me to now.

The only modern innovation being the castling technique. The moves of the King have remained pretty much the same, a single in any direction ( ). The link above will provide you an in-depth view of how the original chess pieces moved. Murray also explains that the pieces have had different and varying moves allocated to each piece throughout time. The king acting as the king, the queen in this variations acting as the minister, the bishop as an elephant according to wiki, the knight as the horse, the rook as the chariot and finally the pawn as what can be assumed to be a footsoldier. Heres a comprehensive list of conjonctural names of pieces in the primitive game : Murray in his 'A History of Chess' (Oxford 1913), 'India was and still remains poor for achaeological findings and it is not before the end of the 16th century that the oldest piece is known'. 'The game of Kings we have today is due to an evolution of many centuries' ~ H.J.R Murray, but namely the evolution of the Queens role on the chess board.įor instance after searching the web for a while, I read that the pieces of the ancient Indian chess game were first named in India by Ratnakara in his Haravijaya (circa 850), according to H.J.R. The earliest forms of chess, particularly the Indian and Persian precursor games, thanks to google search, the names and capabilities of the pieces are not the names we are accustomed to today. Notice that if Karpov had promoted to a piece other than a knight, Timman would have the opportunity to create a perpetual check pattern with his queen, forcing a tie.Ever since when the book titled ' Birth of the Chess Queen' by Marilyn Yalom (published in 2001) was recommended to me a year ago, my interest in chess increased vastly, particularly the queen chess piece. This game, played by GM Anatoly Karpov against GM Jan Timman in 1986, illustrates the concept of underpromoting to gain a tempo and avoid a draw. In this case, promoting to a bishop is a better choice for white, avoiding a stalemate to checkmate the black king later! In this diagram, you can see that promoting the pawn to a queen (or even a rook) would be an unfortunate blunder, since this would surround Black's king, leaving no legal moves and ending the game in a draw. Here is an excellent example of an underpromotion taking place to avoid a stalemate. In most of these cases, such underpromotion takes place to avoid a stalemate, to deliver checkmate, or to gain a precious tempo. There are some cases, though, when promoting a pawn to a queen would be a terrible mistake. Since the queen is the most powerful piece in chess, any promotion besides queening is considered to be 'less powerful' and thus is known as underpromotion. Each player had three queens on the board at one point!Īn underpromotion happens when the player promoting a pawn decides to turn it into any piece other than a queen. Because of that, technically, each player can have nine queens, 10 rooks, 10 bishops, and 10 knights, although, in reality, that is nearly impossible to happen.Ī curious example of a game having more than one queen, though, happened in 2011 between GM David Anton Guijarro and IM Alejandro Franco Alonso. There's also no limit regarding the number of active pieces of the same kind on the board. Nowadays, players can promote their pawns to any of the pieces mentioned above.

Most of the time, players promote a pawn to a queen, which is popularly known as 'queening the pawn.' After one player promotes a pawn, the other player has to move (unless they are checkmated, of course). When this happens, the player can replace the pawn for a queen, a rook, a bishop, or a knight. Pawn promotion occurs when a pawn reaches the farthest rank from its original square-the eighth rank for White and first rank for Black. Here is all you need to know about pawn promotion. The mere threat of promoting can be a significant advantage for the player who is familiar with this strategy.

Promoting a pawn is one of the main goals of chess during an endgame.

Chess queen moves