Outside Passed Pawn

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The Outside Passed Pawn evaluation term used in the endgame (or just in the pawn endgame) by a couple of strong chess programs, most notably Crafty.

An Outside Passed Pawn is a passer placed on a leftmost or rightmost file with a pawn of either color on it. All other things being equal, it constitutes almost a winning advantage. This is because it may sacrifice itself, driving the enemy king far away from its own pawns, which may be then captured by the other king. Whereas the principle is simple, the exact implementation rules become tricky because of the numerous exceptions. Broadly speaking, this evaluation term has no use under the pawn race conditions or in positions which might possibly lead to one: if the other side has an unstoppable passed pawn, connected or protected passer, or even the strong candidate passed pawn.

=Forum Posts=
 * Outside passer and candidate passer: definition wanted! :-) by Alessandro Scotti, CCC, February 27, 2006

=External Links=
 * Outside passed pawn from Wikipedia

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