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I enjoy playing chess and thought that I knew all of the "rules." However, I just found out now something interesting but remain very confused regarding what exactly the "Pawn" is able to perform. This may be hard to understand, but as we were playing, my opponent that I was playing against had eventually moved one of his "Pawns" almost to my end of the board (more than half way) and then took one of my pieces using some kind of a crazy format move. I had always thought that in order for a "Pawn" to take an opponents piece, it had to take it with using only a one diagonal square move. In this particular case, he moved his "pawn" in two spots using a two step process, one diagonal and then one forward and then he took one of my pieces, which I had thought was in a very safe position.

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    Did your opponent capture a pawn, or was it another type of piece that was captured? Do you remember exactly how far your opponent's pawn had advanced before the capture in question occurred?
    – Scounged
    Feb 10, 2019 at 11:39
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    You've been referred to a link on en passant capture, but based on your description, your opponent did not make a legal en passant capture. There is no legal move in chess where a pawn moves diagonally one square and then forward another square.
    – rcook
    Feb 12, 2019 at 18:06
  • @rcook True. en passant captures work as if the captured piece had only moved one square, and the capturing piece, which is also supposed to be a pawn, takes the place of the pawn on that square. For example, if your pawn is on f4 and the opponent's pawn moves past yours from g6 to g4, you can capture it and move your pawn to g5. But not g4, like the OP seems to indicate.
    – cst1992
    Sep 4, 2022 at 5:56

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Check out en passant... a very common rule to overlook.

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  • Not sure if it was en passant since the OP described his opponent using a two-step process. En passant just involves a normal diagonal capture.
    – Inertial Ignorance
    Feb 10, 2019 at 19:50
  • Well, more-or-less normal. I think the 'normal' way is for the pawn to move forward one square diagonally, replacing the opposing piece taken. An en passant capture has the same move -- one square diagonally forward -- but the piece taken must be a pawn, must have just moved two spaces (past the capturing pawn), and, at the time of the capturing move, is beside the capturing pawn, not on the square the capturing pawn moves to. Those parts are not 'normal'.
    – rcook
    Feb 12, 2019 at 18:05

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