Rule 9D in the 7th edition of the US Chess rulebook reads:
"9D. Pawn promotion.
In the case of the legal promotion of a pawn, the move is determined with no possibility of change when the pawn has been removed from the chessboard and the player’s hand has released the new appropriate piece on the promotion square, and completed when that player presses the clock (5H). If the player has released the pawn on the last rank, the move is not yet determined, but the player no longer has the right to play the pawn to another square. The choice of piece is finalized when the piece has touched the square of promotion, regardless of whether the pawn has been physically touched or placed on the promotion square. Once a piece has touched the promotion square a pawn must be promoted to that piece on that square, provided that the move is legal."
Wouldn’t it make more sense to say the move is determined “when the piece you are promoting the pawn to has touched the square of promotion, regardless of whether the pawn has been physically touched or placed on the promotion square” rather then “when the pawn has been removed from the chessboard and the player’s hand has released the new appropriate piece on the promotion square”.
Oy. That’s unreadable, apparently due to the line breaks coming in from the original source. (Wouldn’t it be great to have a keystroke that reformats paragraphs? I’ll have to check the PhpBB mods)
This is one of those situations where the use of “determined” in US Chess rules is hard to quite understand. If you have a pawn on c7, slap a Queen down on (the empty) c8, and you have no choice but c8=Q, i.e. the move seems to be “determined”. But suppose c8=Q is mate? Do you have to actually take the pawn off c7 first? In my opinion, that would be yes, but that’s if one takes the attitude that a mating move has to be “executed” rather than “determined”. (There’s a separate recent thread about that). The description in the rule book is basically that for promotion, determine=executed, which, given how frequently (as opposed to other moves) promotion in fact is a mate, is a good thing.
Probably. Hey, this is interesting. What if white has pawns on both d7 and f7, and black has a rook on e8? Suppose white then causes a queen (from off the board) to touch the e8 square – and we might as well assume also that he has removed the black rook from the board.
In the above case, the move is obviously not yet determined. But what if dxe8=Q and fxe8=Q are both checkmate? Then we have a case where checkmate has been determined, even though the move has not been:
To continue this ridiculous hypothetical, what happens if white, after releasing the queen on e8, runs out of time? Does he still win because he has determined checkmate, or does he lose because has not determined a checkmating move?
Or, what happens if dxe8=Q is checkmate but fxe8=Q is stalemate? Sorry, I don’t have a diagram for that.
The promotion rule 9D tells us the proper way to make a move that involves promotion. It has become common in US Chess play to allow various ways to do a promotion. In the situation that Bill discusses it is a bit more extreme. Some TDs or players would accept the queen on the board with both pawns still on the 7th. That said, the move has not been determined as there are two possibilities for the capture. If I were the TD watching the game, I would make the promoting player(A) at least restart his clock if stopped and announce & remove the capturing pawn and claim mate. If we really want to have fun, player A’s clock falls as he releases the queen on the board but before removing one of the pawns. Player B immediately claims an illegal move. As I rule that the move has not been determined, A loses. Had A touched one of the pawns, the move would then have been determined and A wins. I am sure my ruling will start a storm of replies.
The point is (or at least should be—Bill conflated a couple of issues) that simply touching a promoting piece on the promotion square doesn’t determine the move (either in standard English usage or US Chess rule-ese) because there could be two pawns capable of doing the promotion. It’s simpler to leave it the way it is than to throw in an extra clause to deal with that situation. Note the final sentence (emphasis mine):
so it seems that the wording was designed from the start to deal with the possibility that there might be two possible promoters.
