En Passant: The Special Move
When people first begin to learn chess, they generally find a piece such as the knight to be difficult to learn. The pawn? Not so much. However, there is a cool move called the En Passant with the pawn that might be confusing to learn, but which later turns into an amazing advantage.
Take a look at the below position. The green arrow symbolizes where the black pawn is moving.
When a pawn moves two squares in one move and is right next to the opponent’s pawn after the move, the opponent pawn is able to capture that pawn diagonally. So, since this black pawn is moving two squares in one move and is adjacent to the opponent’s pawn immediately after that move, white can capture that black pawn diagonally. This is called the En Passant.
As seen in the above image, the white pawn moves diagonally to the f6 square and captures the black pawn on f5. So, the position will look like the below afterwords.
It is important to know that an en passant can only be done immediately after your opponent has moved his pawn next to yours. For instance, in the first position above, if white played another move instead of the En Passant, they would no longer be able to take that pawn using the En Passant
You may have now realized that en passant can only be done when you or your opponent’s pawn moves two squares at once. That is only possible on the first time a pawn is moved. Thus, when an en passant captures another pawn, it can only capture pawns on the fifth or sixth rank, depending on whether it is white or black doing it.
Author: Saharsh Satheesh
