Pawns In Passing, Part I

By International Master Bryan Smith

I learned chess in my seventh grade math class. My math class was taken over by chess fever - all of the kids played chess at any free moment. After math lessons were done, we played chess against each other. Now I am an International Master (the second highest title anyone can achieve in chess), but back then I was just starting out.

We had already been playing for quite some time. I knew what a fork was, what a pin was, I knew how much the pieces were worth. I especially loved making forks. The dream was the "royal fork", which is where you win the queen by forking the enemy king and queen with the knight. For more information on forks, check out this article here!

Suddenly a rumor appeared amongst us students. There was a "secret rule" involving pawns. Somehow they were able to capture each other in a different way than usual. It was the last rule that we did not know!

I didn't believe the rumor at first. How could we have been playing for months and not know all the rules?! The kid who told us that must have been playing a joke, I thought.

Actually, he was right. The "secret rule" is called en passant. En passant is French for "in passing". It is pronounced like "awn passawnt."

How does it work? Well, first of all, you can only capture en passant immediately after your opponent made a two-square move with his or her pawn.

After a pawn moves two squares, it looks like this:

The black pawn captures the white pawn, as if the white pawn had only moved one square. After the en passant capture, it looks like this:

The white pawn has been swept off the board as it passed through the square b3. The black pawn takes its place. So, basically it is like the white pawn had gone b2-b3, and then the black pawn took it.

There are some important things to remember about this rule:

1. The capture must be made after a two-square move by a pawn. If you don't do it right away, and instead make some other move with a different piece, you cannot capture that pawn en passant later.

2. Only pawns can capture en passant, and only pawns can be captured en passant.

3. The capturing pawn ends up on square where the captured pawn passed through (the third or sixth rank).

Now that you know how the en passant rule works, check out part II of this article by clicking here. There you will be able to practice your en passant captures and become an expert at it!