I've got a question to all the masters out there. I just got mated by
an opponent who moved one of his pawns up two rows. That pawn put
me in check, but i had a pawn that could have taken his pawn en
passant. However, I wasn't given the option to do so and lost the
game. Can you take a pawn en passant if it has placed your king in
check? Please help!!!
If you look at a lot of the games on RHP, you will notice that not
many use en passant, especially when it could be devastating to the
offender. I think that a lot of new players are unaware of what it is. If
dejongh didn't know of this rule, he would have a very difficult time
trying to take himself out of check. This might just be something that
the program does to keep play going along (even though it's a new
game.) A new player could go insane trying to move every piece until
they found the correct one with an unusual move. I haven't used the
en passant here, YET. Otherwise, I'd reference a game. to show other
new players, such as myself.
I happen to have used it several times recently, with great effect. It
seems (as you suggested) that many players don't know that it
exists, or how it works. Here is a link to one of my games, still in
progress, in which I used en passant as Black's half of move 11:
http://www.redhotpawn.com/core/viewhistory.php?gameid=54143
From what I know, nothing about being in check should affect one's
ability to exercise the en passant privilege, but that is only my
opinion. Hope never to be put in the position where I have to explore
that question🙂 Hope the link helps!
--David
OK...I posted once a minute ago, and said I didn't know the answer.
But I went and looked it up in my vast chess library (2 books) and
found the answer. It appears the RHP chess engine has made a
mistake. I quote from Fred Reinfeld's "Chess in a
Nutshell" : "Capturing en passant is optional. When a player has the
opportunity to capture, he may act on it or ignore it. However, if the
opportunity is not seized at the first opportunity, then the en passant
capture capture cannot be made subsequently. There are two
situations in which a compulsory feature is involved. I. If the player's
King is under attack and the only way to extricate the King is by an en
passant capture, then that capture MUST be made. II. If a player
has an opportunity for en passant capture which would expose his King
to attack, then he cannot make the capture." Hope this helps.
