Letter #29 -  2010

Sub:    Square area of Queening
Date:   08/01/10  11:21:00 PM EDT
From:  Salem22
To:      service@Chess-poster.com

Hi,

I find your site very vast and complete to the point that I consider it to be my "Online Encyclopedia of Chess" for all my present and future references.

And yet, I haven't found any information in your site regarding a little known Chess maneuver called 'Square area of Queening'. This refers to the minimum square area needed for a Pawn to be able to promote to Queen.

This applies to King and Pawn endings only, of course.

Thank you.

Dear viewer,

The square area of Queening is a simple method to find out if a Pawn would be able to Queen in a King and Pawn endgame by calculating whether the opponent's King can stop a Pawn before reaching the eight rank or not.

Let's consider the following Chess ending position: fig. 1 shows a Pawn in square b4 and able to promote in four moves:

Fig. 1

Now, let's trace an imaginary square area (fig. 2) from the current position of the Pawn to the Queening b8 square or diagonally to the f8 square, in this case a 5x5 square area. If the Pawn and the enemy King are inside this area, then the black King will be able to stop the advancing white Pawn before queening, no matter who moves next.

Fig. 2

On this slightly different position (fig. 3), the Black King is on g3 square and outside the square area of Queening. If white Pawn moves first, it will be able to Queen because each time the Pawn moves forward one square, the square area of Queening shrinks (to 4x4) and the black King will never be able to get inside this area.

On the other hand, if black King moves first, it will enter inside the square area of Queening and can stop the advancing of the Pawn.

Fig. 3

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