Pawn (chess)

The pawn (♙♟) is the most numerous and (in most circumstances) the weakest piece in the game of chess, representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins the game with eight pawns, one on each square of the second rank from the view of the player. In algebraic notation the white pawns start on a2, b2, c2, ..., h2, while the black pawns start on a7, b7, c7, ..., h7.

Pawns are differentiated by the files on which they currently stand. For example, one speaks of "White's f-pawn" or "Black's b-pawn" or, less commonly, "White's king's bishop's pawn" or "Black's queen's knight's pawn" (using descriptive notation). It is also common to refer to a rook pawn, meaning any pawn on the a-file or h-file, a knight pawn (on the b- or g-file), a bishop pawn (on the c- or f-file), a queen pawn (on the d-file), a king pawn (on the e-file), and a central pawn (on either the d- or e-file).