Google En Passant: How a Confused Beginner Created the Biggest Meme in Chess

If you have spent any time in online chess communities, you have seen it. Someone posts a question about a weird pawn move. A commenter replies with two words: "Google en passant." The original poster fires back: "Holy hell." That is it. That is the meme. And somehow, it became the single most recognizable joke in all of chess internet culture. ## The Original Post It started on r/chessbeginners, a Reddit forum where new players go to ask questions without getting roasted. A user posted about a game on Chess.com where something impossible seemed to happen. Their pawn was on f4. The opponent's pawn was on e4. Then the opponent moved their pawn to f3, and the user's pawn on f4 just vanished. The user was confused and angry. They thought the AI was cheating. Someone in the comments had the perfect response: "Google en passant." The original poster, presumably after doing exactly that, came back with the now-legendary reply: "Holy hell." That post got 55,000 upvotes. Because every single person who has ever learned chess can remember the exact moment en passant happened to them for the first time. ## What Is En Passant, Actually? For anyone who still needs to Google it: en passant is a real, legal chess move that has existed since the 15th century. Here is how it works. If a pawn moves two squares forward from its starting position and lands beside an opponent's pawn, the opponent can capture it "in passing" on the very next move. The capturing pawn moves diagonally to the square the advancing pawn skipped over, as if it had only moved one square. It is the only capture in chess where the capturing piece does not land on the square of the captured piece. That is why it feels like witchcraft the first time you see it. The rule was introduced when pawns gained the ability to move two squares on their first move. Without en passant, a pawn could use that double-step to skip past an enemy pawn's attack range, which broke the game's balance. En passant fixed that loophole. It has been in the official rules for over 500 years. But that does not stop beginners from filing bug reports about it every single day. ## Chess.com Has Received Thousands of Bug Reports About This In September 2018, Chess.com staff member Erik published an article specifically addressing the avalanche of reports they had received from players who thought en passant was a glitch. The post was filled with memes because at that point, the situation had become comedy. Players would write in saying things like "your AI is cheating" or "this is an illegal move, please fix your software." Every one of them was describing en passant. The reports came in so frequently that Chess.com had to create a dedicated FAQ page for it. This is not a small number. When you have over 100 million users and a rule that looks like a bug, the support tickets pile up fast. ## r/AnarchyChess Turned It Into a Religion If r/chess is the town square of online chess, r/AnarchyChess is the dive bar next door where everyone is on their third drink and screaming about pawns. r/AnarchyChess is a chess shitposting subreddit, and it adopted "Google en passant" as its founding scripture. But the community did not stop at repeating the meme. They built an entire mythology around it. **En passant is forced.** This is the first commandment of r/AnarchyChess. If you have the opportunity to capture en passant and you decline, you have committed a grave offense. **The brick rule.** If you decline en passant, you must drop a brick on your pipi. This is non-negotiable. The community treats this with the same seriousness that FIDE treats the touch-move rule. **The copypasta chain.** The original exchange spawned an ever-growing copypasta format: "Google en passant" "Holy hell" "New response just dropped" "Actual zombie" "Call the exorcist" Each reply builds on the last in an absurdist chain that new users stumble into and old users never tire of repeating. **Related lore.** The en passant mythology intersects with other r/AnarchyChess traditions, including the Knook (a knight-rook hybrid piece the community invented), and the "pipi in your pampers" copypasta (from an unhinged rant by chess player Tigran Petrosian after being accused of cheating by Wesley So). Together, these memes form an interconnected universe of chess internet humor that makes absolutely no sense to outsiders and perfect sense to anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes on the subreddit. ## The Chess.com Twitter Moment In January 2023, the official Chess.com Twitter account posted a simple question: what advice would you give to new chess players? The replies were unanimous. Hundreds of people responded with the same two words: "Google en passant." It was a coordinated effort that demonstrated something remarkable. The meme had escaped Reddit entirely. It was no longer an inside joke for r/AnarchyChess regulars. It had become the default response any time chess and beginners were mentioned in the same sentence, on any platform. ## Why This Meme Works Most internet memes have a shelf life measured in weeks. "Google en passant" has been going strong for years. There are a few reasons for that. **It is universally relatable.** Every chess player, regardless of rating, has a memory of encountering en passant for the first time and being confused. The meme recreates that experience perfectly. **It is endlessly repeatable.** The format is simple enough that it works in any context where someone discovers something they should have known. "Google [thing]." "Holy hell." The template travels. **It is self-perpetuating.** New players discover chess every day. Each one will eventually encounter en passant, be confused, and either post about it or Google it. The meme creates its own audience in an infinite loop. **It is genuinely funny.** The combination of a confused beginner, a deadpan two-word response, and an awestruck reply captures something real about the internet experience of learning. It is not mean-spirited. It is the joy of discovering that the world is weirder than you thought. ## The Bigger Picture "Google en passant" is more than a joke. It is a cultural artifact of the chess boom that started around 2020, when The Queen's Gambit, Twitch streaming, and pandemic boredom brought millions of new players to the game. Those new players came with no knowledge of en passant, castling, stalemate, or any of the rules that experienced players take for granted. And instead of being gatekept, they were welcomed with a meme. "Google en passant" is simultaneously a joke and actual advice. It tells you what to do (search for it) and makes you part of the community the moment you understand it. That is why it has endured. It is the perfect onboarding tool, disguised as a shitpost. ## Try It Yourself If you are reading this and you have never played chess online, go play a game on Lichess or Chess.com. Wait for en passant to happen. Feel the confusion. Google it. Holy hell. ## Explore More The chess internet is deeper than you think. Check out our coverage of [r/chess](https://trendingchess.com/r-chess), the [subreddit that became the town square of online chess](https://trendingchess.com/r-chess), or browse the full directory at [TrendingChess.com](https://trendingchess.com).