The pawn historically represents soldiers or infantry, or more particularly, armed peasants or pikemen.
[2] A pawn that advances to its last rank is promoted to a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of the same color.
Reasons for underpromotion include tactical positions involving a knight check, and avoiding stalemate.
While some chess sets include an extra queen of each color, most standard sets do not come with additional pieces, so the physical piece used to replace a promoted pawn on the board is usually one that was previously captured.
In informal games, when the correct piece is not available, an additional queen is often indicated by inverting a previously captured rook.
In tournament games, however, this is not acceptable, and may result in the arbiter ruling that the upturned piece is a rook.
White will have an easier time than Black in finding good squares for their pieces, particularly with an eye to the kingside.
In the middlegame, however, Black has slightly more freedom of movement than White and may be able to trade off the isolated pawn before an endgame ensues.
In truth, White wins this endgame on the strength of the protected passed pawn, regardless which player moves first.
The black king cannot be on both sides of the board at once – to defend the isolated h-pawn and to stop White's c-pawn from advancing to promotion.
In medieval chess, as an attempt to make the pieces more interesting, each pawn was given the name of a commoner's occupation:[5] The most famous example of this is found in the second book ever printed in the English language, The Game and Playe of the Chesse.
[7] The ability to move two spaces and the related ability to capture en passant were introduced in 15th-century Europe;[9] the en passant capture spread to various regions throughout its history.
In some languages the term for pawn is a name meaning "peasant" or "farmer", reflecting how the lower orders were conscripted as footsoldiers in wartime: Hungarian paraszt, Slovene kmet, German Bauer, Danish/Norwegian/Swedish bonde, Latvian bandinieks.
In Thai the pawn is called เบี้ย (bîia), which signifies a cowrie shell or a coin of little value.
In Turkish the pawn is called piyon, borrowed from the French word Pion in the 19th century.