Pawn (chess) Pawn (chess) The pawn (♙,♟) is the most numerous piece in the game of chess, and in most circumstances, also the weakest. It historically represents infantry, or more particularly, armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins a game with eight pawns, one on each square of the immediately in front of the other pieces. (The white pawns start on a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2; the black pawns start on a7, b7, c7, d7. e7, f7, g7, h7.) Individual pawns are referred to by the on which they stand. For example, one speaks of "White's f-pawn" or "Black's
Courier chess the standard chessboard in place of the old alfil and gave the queen the combined powers of the courier and the rook. This game was so much more exciting than medieval chess that it soon drove the older game off the market. Other improvements were tried out. One was an optional double first step for the pawns. This was at first restricted to the king's, queen's, and rooks' pawns, and then gradually extended to the others. In the early sixteenth century Lucas van Leyden, in the Netherlands, painted a picture called "The Chess Players" in which a woman appears to