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Pawn promotion statistics

Pawn promotion statistics

Posers and Puzzles

M

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Out of the billions of chess games played thoughout history there are a significant proportion of them where a pawn or pawns were promoted.

If you could take all these games and look at which pawn it was, statistically which one do you think was most commonly promoted.

Is this different for black/white?

I doubt it would be the d or e pawns because they often don't last to late-middle or endgame. Apart from that i can't think of any other factors affecting the probability of a certain pawn being promoted more than others....

What do you think?

D

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Try asking Tim Krabbe. He can find the answer in seconds using game databases and CQL (chess query language).

X
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p^2.sin(phi)

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Originally posted by David113
Try asking Tim Krabbe. He can find the answer in seconds using game databases and CQL (chess query language).
I'd be interested to see if he can. I'm pretty sure I can't easily find the answer using Chessbase and its searches (which are normally sufficient to find most anything). I can find which square is the most promoted on but that doesn't tell me which spot the pawn started out on.

A

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I would guess, the a,b,g and h-pawns because theyare usually ignored in the opening and middlegame, and the Kijng can easily help them push to the end, eg. Kb7 would ensure against a Kinga promotion for an a-pawn.
But that's just my humble opinion.
ALETHIA
PS. Xanthos, I love your profile and it's picture! Made me laugh.

X
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p^2.sin(phi)

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Originally posted by Alethia
I would guess, the a,b,g and h-pawns because theyare usually ignored in the opening and middlegame, and the Kijng can easily help them push to the end, eg. Kb7 would ensure against a Kinga promotion for an a-pawn.
But that's just my humble opinion.
ALETHIA
PS. Xanthos, I love your profile and it's picture! Made me laugh.
Possessive its doesn't need an apostrophe.

A

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Originally posted by XanthosNZ
Possessive its doesn't need an apostrophe.
I know... it's the only word that doesn't need a possesive.... I just made a mistake, alright!

AThousandYoung
1st Dan TKD Kukkiwon

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Originally posted by XanthosNZ
I'd be interested to see if he can. I'm pretty sure I can't easily find the answer using Chessbase and its searches (which are normally sufficient to find most anything). I can find which square is the most promoted on but that doesn't tell me which spot the pawn started out on.
Which square is the most promoted on?

S

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are you asking which pawn from the starting position? or which square the pawn promotes to. Example: if the a pawn captures (obviously to the b file) and promotes on b8 or b1

A

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Originally posted by Stockton
are you asking which pawn from the starting position? or which square the pawn promotes to. Example: if the a pawn captures (obviously to the b file) and promotes on b8 or b1
Um, like we've been discussing, the square the promoted pawn starts on.
Maybe read the thread next time before jumping in, OK?

X
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Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Which square is the most promoted on?
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/2351/promotionsiz0.gif

AThousandYoung
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Originally posted by XanthosNZ
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/2351/promotionsiz0.gif
Wow. That's fascinating. It's not symmetrical about the center but instead seems to be based on how far that file is from where the king goes when one castles kingside.

X
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Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Wow. That's fascinating. It's not symmetrical about the center but instead seems to be based on how far that file is from where the king goes when one castles kingside.
I'd do more analysis (what does it look like in games with queenside vs. kingside vs. no castling) but the searches aren't very fast and it would be quite a number of queries.

If I could find a way to automate the searches (so I could just leave my computer for a few hours and it would do all the searches) I'd do it.

M

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Thanks for doing that, very interesting stuff

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