Hypothetical Chess Postition Diagram

Some people don’t know anything about chess!
I found this picture on Amazon. Haha :laughing:

Then I thought about if this position is possible and who would win if it was.
If you take the pawn off the 8th rank, the position would be legal. Some chess computers don’t let you place a pawn on the first rank. Is it legal to place a pawn on the first rank?
I generated this position:

My first move would be b8=Q
:smiley:

If I ever found a chess set on display in a store with a realistic position (better yet, a key position from a famous game, i.e., Byrne-Fischer), I would definitely walk in to at least talk to the person who set it up.

The White pawn on b1 or Black one on g8 makes the position illegal. Also, to make a hextupled pawn on the b or g file would require 14 captures.

Last summer I was in Chicago for a few days. In the lobby of our hotel they had a chess set, but they had the white square on the left. I reset the board correctly. Later that day we were visiting the Art Institute. They had the exact same chess set in the gift shop. It was also set up incorrectly. I decided I would not mess with the display in the gift shop, though it was tempting. I didn’t want someone coming over and asking me what I was doing to their set. :stuck_out_tongue:

Whenever they have a chess tournament at the Renaissance Hotel in Agoura Hills, CA, the hotel sets up a large, heavy-duty matt with a chessboard, and large plastic pieces (about 2 or 3 feet tall) in the middle of the lobby. They were even able to repair the top of the King when some of the kids were having a somewhat-too-intense blitz game.

Thanks for the helpful insight! Placing a pawn on the first rank is illegal right?

How would the pawn get there? Since you set up the white pawns on the 2nd rank and they never move backwards…

A pawn could temporarily exist on the last rank if you or a TD was trying to find the piece to which you wanted the pawn promoted.

Even if you remove all four of the pawns on the first and eighth, the position is still illegal.

The six white pawns would have to have come from six different files. Best case (fewest captures) would be a,b,c,d,e,f. This would require 1,0,1,2,3,4 (respectively) captures, for a total of 11 captures. But black doesn’t have 11 pieces (or pawns) off the board to have been captured.

Bill Smythe