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Learnning En Passant

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SaladorSan

Could somebody tell me why a couldn't do en passant in this 2 cases:



Martin_Stahl
SaladorSan wrote:

Could somebody tell me why a couldn't do en passant in this 2 cases:

In order to take en passant, the taking pawn has to be on it's fifth rank and the adjacent pawn has to make its initial move two squares. Then you can take the pawn as your next move as if your opponent had only moved one.

In the first image your pawn was on the fifth rank but the opponent's pawn had previously moved and did not make its initial move of two squares.

In the second image your pawn isn't on it's fifth rank and your opponents pawn also didn't just make it's initial move two squares.

https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8557558-what-is-en-passant-it-s-not-an-illegal-pawn-move

daothanhbinh123

Chess com

RalphHayward

When I explain en passant, I try to give a bit of a chess history lesson so that people have something other than just mechanical facts to hang their understanding of the rule upon. The (true) story goes...

Originally, Pawns could only ever move one square at a time. This made chess a very slow game, so someone came up with the idea that Pawns should have the choice of moving either one or two squares forward on their first move.

But that then led to too many blocked positions as Pawns scooted past other Pawns' attacks on their first move.

So, after a while, someone came up with en passant. If a Pawn has just moved two squares, on that move only an opposing Pawn can take it as if it had only moved one square; "in passing" because the Pawn "passed through" a square - it didn't 'jump' like Knights do.

In the position at the start of this thread, the Pawn had only moved one square forwards so the special rule doesn't apply.