The official set of chess rules published by FIDE, the most renowned institution in the sport, points out that whenever a pawn reaches the farthest rank from its starting position, it can be exchanged by a rook, bishop, knight, or even a queen of the same color.
When that, which is called promotion, happens, the player gets a new piece of the chosen kind.
Should the player that gets one of his pawns to the farthest rank opt for a knight, and he or she still has both starting pieces of the same kind, there will be three knights of the same color.
By now, you’ll probably realize why the queen, rather than the rook, bishop, or knight, is mentioned in the title.
Well, considering that the queen is the strongest piece on the board due to its larger range of movement, it makes sense that players opt for the queen in the promotion more often than the other pieces.
How Many Queens Can You Get To Promote In Chess?
So, as the game goes on and a player gets as many pawns as possible to the promotion squares, the total amount of changes that can be made is eight since there are eight pawns on each side of the board.
Therefore, following this line of thought, there can be eight new queens on the board, which, added to the starting one, makes up the final count of nine.
Yes, the largest number of queens a player can have in a chess match is nine. However, that is an incredibly unlikely scenario. For that to happen, a series of factors have to coincide.
It’s Unlikely To Promote To All Queens
First, the player cannot lose any of his pawns, which is already extremely rare in a chess match.
Secondly, all eight pawns have to reach their corresponding promotion squares, which means none of them shall be captured or killed by any of the opponent’s pieces.
Thirdly, not only the starting queen but none of the other eight promoted queens can be captured either.
What If It Can Happen?
There may even be other circumstances for that scenario to happen, but just these three factors already set the bar so high it becomes unimaginable to consider it to indeed happen.
Additionally, the more queens a player has on the board, the higher the chances a stalemate happens. That is because with such versatility of movement, a few queens may already potentially cover all the squares on the board.
That is the perfect recipe for a stalemate since the king, even if not in check at a certain moment, may become unable to safely move to any other square.
As we know, the rules of chess forbid players to intentionally put the king in threat so the excess of queens on the board would easily cause the game to end in a draw.
And it’s not so difficult to see why a player that is facing a few queens on the other side should seek the stalemate as an alternative to the fragrant loss to come.