En passant — what it means in chess
A pawn capturing an enemy pawn that has just advanced two squares, as if it had moved only one.
A pawn capturing an enemy pawn that has just advanced two squares, as if it had moved only one.
[[board startfen="4k3/3p4/8/4P3/8/8/8/4K3 b - - 0 1" caption="En passant: the black pawn leaps two squares to slip past — and White captures it anyway, as if it had moved one. The window for this capture is exactly one move wide, then closed forever." pgn="d5 exd6" notes="The most misunderstood rule in chess, about to happen correctly. Black uses the two-square first move, trying to sneak the pawn PAST White's without ever standing on the attacked square — — and en passant closes the loophole: White captures on d6, the square the pawn skipped, exactly as if it had moved one square. The captured pawn leaves from d5. Two things make this rule strict: only a pawn on its fifth rank can do it, only against an adjacent pawn's two-square leap, and only IMMEDIATELY — decline it this move, and the right is gone for the rest of the game."]]
En passant — "in passing" — is the rule that closes the two-square leap's loophole: when an enemy pawn uses its double first step to land beside your pawn on its fifth rank, you may capture it as though it had moved only one square, taking on the square it skipped. The captured pawn leaves the board from where it stood; your pawn lands where the capture "should" have happened. The rule exists for exactly the reason it looks like it does — when the double step was introduced to speed up openings, it accidentally let pawns tiptoe past enemy pawns untouched, and the game's lawmakers refused the free pass.
The Endgame Society glossary defines more than 240 chess terms — rules, notation, tactics, strategy, pawn structures, endgames, and openings — in language a beginner can act on rather than dictionary shorthand.