Quadrupled pawns: a chance in a million?

In chess, doubled pawns are often considered a weakness; two pawns on the same file cannot defence each other. And, a number of strategies and openings are based upon inflicting this disadvantage upon an opponent, and so doubled pawns are relatively common at all levels of play.

Of course, it is also possible to have tripled pawns; the most famous example of which is arguably Kavalek v Fischer (1967, Sousse) – the game ended in draw. And, rather surprisingly, there are even instances of quadrupled pawns; the most prominent example of which is probably Kovacs v Barth (1994) – again the game was drawn.

So, are quadrupled pawns a chance in a million? No, not quite. In searching through some recent games (i.e. the entire FICS database for one month), 17 examples were spotted. This means 17 examples out of 1,732,596 games or – in rough terms – odds of 1 in every 102,000 games!