League of Legends streamer ‘Caedrel’ was one move away from checkmating his opponent, but lost his cool after his chess foe used a move he had no idea existed.
Chess has become of the best ways for LoL streamers to pass the time while waiting in match queues, with Tyler1 leading the charge by climbing all the way to 1900 ELO.
Content creator Caedrel has been playing chess too, and on May 14 found himself just a single move away from checkmating his opponent – but then disaster struck.
After analyzing the board and reaching the conclusion that moving his pawn up two squares would result in a checkmate, he excitedly pulled the trigger on the move, prematurely celebrating what he believed was a sure victory.
Except, it wasn’t. In chess, there is a very specific situation where a player can capture their opponent’s pawn with their own if it moves up two spaces and is directly adjacent to them.
League of Legends streamer @Caedrel learns en passant the hard way pic.twitter.com/IZkteSO0Tx
— lichess.org (@lichess) May 14, 2024
This is called ‘en passant,’ and while most beginners may not know about this rule, it can come in quite clutch, as we saw in Caedrel’s game.
At first, the streamer was confused why checkmate hadn’t popped up on his screen, and then he grew increasingly irritated when his opponent used en passant to escape the mate.
“What happened?! How did that not work?” the tilted streamer cried. “How did he take that?”
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Worst of all, now that he was upset, he ended up missing moving his rook a single space that would have actually ended the game. Instead, his foe took the advantage.
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“How did I not win this game already? I don’t get it. I had checkmate! The game is bugged,” he insisted before eventually begrudgingly accepting the loss.
After the dust had settled, Caedrel pulled up a video about en passant to understand why he was defeated. Amazingly, he had quite the comparison to MOBAs once he understood the situation.
“It’s like a high-ground low-ground hit box,” he said, putting the move in video game terms. “It didn’t hit, but it hit.”
It’s clear that Caedrel has a lot to learn before he reaches Tyler1’s level, but if he can keep applying familiar terms to chess, he may have a shot at making the climb just as his fellow Twitch star has been doing.