Questions relating to pawns in chess
A Pawn is a piece in chess which can only move one square forward per move. An exception to this is that if a Pawn has not moved since the beginning of the game, it may move either one or two squares for its first move, as long as the square it crosses and the square it lands on are both unoccupied. The Pawn captures (see captures) by moving diagonally forward (one square only) to occupy the square of an opposing piece. It may not capture by moving directly forward. It is the only piece to capture in a different manner than it moves normally. In standard chess, each player begins the game with eight Pawns, all on the second rank, and filling the second rank.
The Pawn has two special features: the ability to be promoted (see pawn-promotion), and the ability to execute an en passant capture (see en-passant). Wikipedia's description of en passant:
This arises when a pawn uses its initial-move option to advance two squares instead of one, and in so doing passes over a square that is attacked by an enemy pawn. That enemy pawn, which would have been able to capture the moving pawn had it advanced only one square, is entitled to capture the moving pawn "in passing" as if it had advanced only one square. The capturing pawn moves into the empty square over which the moving pawn moved, and the moving pawn is removed from the board.
The Pawn has an approximate value of 1 on a scale of 1-9, where Knights and Bishops each have the value of 3, a Rook has the value of 5, and the Queen has the value of 9.
The symbol for the Pawn in descriptive notation (see notation) is P, but in algebraic notation, the Pawn is referred to either by the file it occupied before capturing (when capturing; e.g. exd4), or by the destination square (when simply moving; e.g. d4)
For more information about Pawns, see the Wikipedia article.
