En passant is the rule most players learn last and trust least: a pawn advancing two squares can be captured, for one move only, as if it had moved one. In these puzzles, that odd little rule is not a footnote — it is the winning move. Solve the featured real-game puzzle below, then keep training the pattern in the trainer at your own level.
Tactically, en passant does things no other capture can. It opens a file or diagonal that was closed a half-move ago, unmasking a rook or bishop at the perfect moment. It removes a pawn that just tried to lock the position, keeping an attack alive. It deflects or destroys a defender that thought it was safe. And in rare, delightful positions, the en passant capture itself delivers checkmate — or is the only move that avoids stalemating the opponent.
The value is subtle: because the option exists for exactly one move, players filter it out of their calculations. These puzzles put it back on the list. The discipline generalizes — the moves you never consider are where blunders and missed wins live. One more legality worth knowing: if en passant is your only legal move, you must play it.
When a pawn advances two squares from its starting rank and lands beside an enemy pawn, that enemy pawn may capture it as if it had advanced only one square — but only on the very next move. Miss the window and the right disappears for that pawn pair forever.
It arrived with the two-square first move, which was added to speed up the game. Without en passant, a pawn could sprint past an enemy pawn's capture square and neutralize it — so the rule preserves the older balance: a pawn cannot use its double step to sneak past a waiting capture.
Both. If en passant is your only legal move, the rules oblige you to play it — a famous source of composed traps. And because the capture removes a pawn from a square nothing else attacks, it can open exactly the line a mating piece needed; real games have ended with the en passant capture as the mate itself.