There are lots of situations where a promotion to a queen would result in stalemate (draw) so a promotion to rook or other piece gets away form this. I'd say Rook would be most common, but some special (problem?) positions a knight or bishop could solve the problem with a mate or a nice fork. E.g. promote to a night with check and an attack on the opponents queen.
It's interesting that all these positions are called "common", but the actual board position might happen zero to one times in a lifetime, and I suspect it's usually zero times.
I noticed something similar when I played contract bridge at a competitive level. A top bridge player might play very roughly on the order of 10,000 hands a year, and vividly recall something that happens on the order of once a year as "oh yeah that's common". Of course I wasn't remotely close to them. But there is something about competitive games that seem to amplify the memory for certain kinds of unusual situations.
(Some people are commenting about under promoting to avoid stalemate traps down the line. I've always been a weak chess player, but... trying to set a stalemate trap after being down a queen, in a non-contrived position, is, like, adult chess players shouldn't do that. In my limited experience.)
> vividly recall something that happens on the order of once a year as "oh yeah that's common".
I mean, think of how many times a typical person has sex in their life. Hopefully they and their partner aren't getting pregnant more than roughly once per year. But somebody getting pregnant after having sex is reasonably defined as common. Certainly common enough that it's something you would consider and take precautions to prevent if you didn't want it to happen.
In ranked chess games, underpromotion happens about 1 in 1000ish games. I imagine it would be more common in high level unranked play. If you play one chess game per day, that's once every 3 years on average. It's not frequent, but I'd describe that as common.
Knight promotion because it's the best piece in the situation happens often. Rook promotion because Queen promotion would be stalemate happens occasionally. Bishop promotion is a theoretical curiosity only.
Just to pile on, a common trick is to sac a queen for say a minor piece, then after king takes queen, a pawn is promoted to a knight with check and a fork on the queen. After the dust settles, a player is up a minor piece.
A knight will attack different squares than a queen so promoting to a knight of course makes obvious sense in situations that warrant.
A rook or a bishop attack a subset of squares that a queen does, so why would you ever pick one of them instead of a queen? To avoid the stalemate where your opponent is not in check but has no legal moves.
The juiciest one is the Albin Counter-gambit. If you follow the "ideal line" where white blunders and takes the bishop bait, there's a neat knight underpromotion to win a queen.
From my own play, I typically see knight f3 from white on move 4, which still results in interesting games.
> There are lots of situations where a promotion to a queen would result in stalemate
You disagree with their 'rare' then where is your analysis?
You gave zero numbers or evidence, you're just saying stuff that pops into your head.
This analysis is a 35 to 1 for queens, knights arethe most popular alternative but I don't believe they played out the opponent resigns which most people do before the promotion to queen or analysised shit/fun playing -
Lichess has a series of puzzles you can try where underpromotion is the theme (which is unfortunately a major giveaway to solving these puzzles, since they otherwise be rather hard to solve)
I had known of stalemate (both causing and preventing it), but there are others as they mention there.
One other I think I have read about (I do not entirely remember) is that someone promoted to rook because promotion to queen would have taken more time due to not having a extra queen to promote to so they would have to go to another table to borrow it (or ask the tournament officials for it).
I've promoted to rook several times in over-the-board tournaments.
It's easier and quieter than stopping the clock and searching for a free queen piece if your position is decisive and your opponent stubborn. Or your piece to be captured immediately.
So not necessarily "cocky" as the answers suggest but rather "mindful to other players".
Conversely, I could see a situation where a queen is available but will be captured right away, so you under-promote to a piece that is not immediately available so you can stop the clock while the arbiter finds the piece you need. If you are in time trouble this could give you some much needed time to reassess the position.
Why would you need to search for a queen piece when yours is already captured? No doubt promoting to multiple queens happens in casual games between very weak players, but extremely rarely in tournament play (where you also don't see "stubborn" players playing on in "decisive" positions unless the winning side has very little time on the clock).
Also, for in-person games, an upside down rook can be used as a queen in a pinch.
It's more common than you think in queen and pawn endgames. It might even end in a dear with two queens in one side: It wasn't on the board because there were other fighting alternatives, but it was pretty close to happening just last week in the Grand Chess Tour finals, where Caruana saw that a second queen wouldn't stop MVL from getting a perpetual.
I'd not say it happens in every tournament, but many active tournament players will see it every year or two. It just happens that at the higher levels, chances are the set came with two queens, as upside down rooks are not great indicators for DGT boards.
The stubborn player situation will happen in real tournaments too, just not those full of GMs. It will happen in your typical rated weekly tournament in the St Louis chess club, where your top tables might not be IMs, or in scholastic tournaments.
Most recreational players have probably underpromoted to a rook at some point to avoid stalemate. I do it online as a matter of course if a rook underpromotion would be immediate checkmate because a rook is all you need so why ask for more.
Bishop is extremely rare but it does happen. For example there was the famous case in the US champs when Fabiano Caruana underpromoted to a bishop[1] vs Ray Robson and Robson immediaely resigned. https://youtu.be/umabaHAGmJQ?si=ETy1cAFw7ydH4MhH
[1] He didn’t have to- he just did it because he had never done it in his whole chess career
Underpromotions to rook or bishop certainly can happen in play to avoid stalemating the opponent and preserving the win. Other reasons don't exist in play (aside from extraneous reasons like not having a queen handy or weak players underpromoting just because they are afraid of stalemating even though promoting to a queen wins) but can in compositions. e.g., here's a position that is the other way around, where promotion to a bishop is stalemate regardless of where the opponent moves and any other promotion loses:
P.S. https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/minor.htm contradicts my "Other reasons don't exist in play", assuming that the game that he analyzes actually happened, which is questionable.
I played chess for only a few years, at a low level, and I encountered situations where underpromotion to a bishop or rook was necessary to win. It's possible it is more common at the just-above-beginner level than at the elite level, because a player in a losing position will play on longer and try to set up stalemate traps that would be pointless in higher-level games.
The unspoken assumption here would be promoting to rook or bishop "instead of a queen" and as the post points out other than avoiding the stalemate situation there doesn't appear to be a logical reason for doing this.
It probably wouldn’t ever happen in a real game, but I think it’s possible to be in a situation where you’re still losing after promoting to a queen, but underpromoting to a bishop forces a stalemate by leaving you with no legal moves no matter what your opponent plays in response.
There are puzzles where only a bishop promotion wins. The others are either forced stalemate or forced draw by repitition. Finding a real game where that happens is unlikely
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I noticed something similar when I played contract bridge at a competitive level. A top bridge player might play very roughly on the order of 10,000 hands a year, and vividly recall something that happens on the order of once a year as "oh yeah that's common". Of course I wasn't remotely close to them. But there is something about competitive games that seem to amplify the memory for certain kinds of unusual situations.
(Some people are commenting about under promoting to avoid stalemate traps down the line. I've always been a weak chess player, but... trying to set a stalemate trap after being down a queen, in a non-contrived position, is, like, adult chess players shouldn't do that. In my limited experience.)
I mean, think of how many times a typical person has sex in their life. Hopefully they and their partner aren't getting pregnant more than roughly once per year. But somebody getting pregnant after having sex is reasonably defined as common. Certainly common enough that it's something you would consider and take precautions to prevent if you didn't want it to happen.
In ranked chess games, underpromotion happens about 1 in 1000ish games. I imagine it would be more common in high level unranked play. If you play one chess game per day, that's once every 3 years on average. It's not frequent, but I'd describe that as common.
https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/minor.htm
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A rook or a bishop attack a subset of squares that a queen does, so why would you ever pick one of them instead of a queen? To avoid the stalemate where your opponent is not in check but has no legal moves.
With a queen it's too easy to make a mistake and get a draw because the other player can't move.
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From my own play, I typically see knight f3 from white on move 4, which still results in interesting games.
You disagree with their 'rare' then where is your analysis?
You gave zero numbers or evidence, you're just saying stuff that pops into your head.
This analysis is a 35 to 1 for queens, knights arethe most popular alternative but I don't believe they played out the opponent resigns which most people do before the promotion to queen or analysised shit/fun playing -
https://blog.ebemunk.com/visual-look-at-2-million-chess-game...
https://lichess.org/training/underPromotion
One other I think I have read about (I do not entirely remember) is that someone promoted to rook because promotion to queen would have taken more time due to not having a extra queen to promote to so they would have to go to another table to borrow it (or ask the tournament officials for it).
It's easier and quieter than stopping the clock and searching for a free queen piece if your position is decisive and your opponent stubborn. Or your piece to be captured immediately. So not necessarily "cocky" as the answers suggest but rather "mindful to other players".
Also, for in-person games, an upside down rook can be used as a queen in a pinch.
I'd not say it happens in every tournament, but many active tournament players will see it every year or two. It just happens that at the higher levels, chances are the set came with two queens, as upside down rooks are not great indicators for DGT boards.
The stubborn player situation will happen in real tournaments too, just not those full of GMs. It will happen in your typical rated weekly tournament in the St Louis chess club, where your top tables might not be IMs, or in scholastic tournaments.
Btw, the upside-down-rook trick is illegal in serious play.
Bishop is extremely rare but it does happen. For example there was the famous case in the US champs when Fabiano Caruana underpromoted to a bishop[1] vs Ray Robson and Robson immediaely resigned. https://youtu.be/umabaHAGmJQ?si=ETy1cAFw7ydH4MhH
[1] He didn’t have to- he just did it because he had never done it in his whole chess career
1n6/PP1p4/n1p5/8/7q/5pbr/5k1p/7K w - - 0 1
https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/5WfasZuA6A/analysis
P.S. https://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/minor.htm contradicts my "Other reasons don't exist in play", assuming that the game that he analyzes actually happened, which is questionable.