Underpromotion Chess Puzzles

About underpromotion puzzles

Underpromotion is the surprising choice to promote a pawn to a knight, bishop, or rook instead of a queen. While rare, underpromotion is sometimes the only winning move — typically because promoting to a queen would result in stalemate or because a knight promotion creates an immediate check or fork. Underpromotion puzzles are among the most counter-intuitive in chess and shock even experienced players who promote to a queen instinctively. Practising underpromotion puzzles trains you to pause before promoting and consider all promotion options. These puzzles also train stalemate awareness — one of the most important defensive resources an inferior player can use to save a lost game.

How to train underpromotion

These positions sit outside the usual patterns, which is exactly why they are worth practising. Expect to be surprised, and check the moves you would normally dismiss.

Questions

How many underpromotion puzzles are there?

Enough that you will not repeat them — this set is drawn from a library of over 1,000,000 puzzles taken from real games, graded from easy to hard.

What level is this suitable for?

Children from about age 5 upward, once they know how the pieces move, through to rated tournament players. Start on the easy set and move up when you are solving most of them at a glance.