Hello, I´m new here and actually I don´t want to know something about playing chess but I have a very important question. I´m from Germany and I study translation and now I´ve to translate a text about Bobby Fischer. One sentence is "the queen swallows an early pawn" and I looked everywhere for a translation for an early pawn. I know what a pawn is but what means early in that context? Could somebody explain that to me pleas? I would be very grateful...this is very important!
thank you very much!

It's not a normal chess term that I know of. It might be something that doesn't translate exactly or something like that. Can you give us the exact context? Was there a diagram? What was the full text you were reading?

--Fromper

I would take it to mean the queen captured a pawn very near the beginning of the game. If you have an "early knockout" in a boxing match, it means that someone was unconscious before the average person would be.

Queen captured an early pawn... possibly the side with the lost pawn blundered! OR the queen was tricked into taking a pawn prematurely and fell victim to a devastating attack?

Thank you very much for your immediate replies. There was unfortunately no diagram. The exact context was: `If you could see inside his brain, as his enemies no doubt hoped to, you would find it primed to attack and defend in every way possible, with a straight-moving rook or a sidling bishop, or with both in his favourite Ruy Lopez opening, or with the queen swallowing an early pawn in the "poisoned" version of the Sicilian, or a thousand others.` That´s everything concerning the game. I really thought it was a term used in chess since I also found that combination very often on Wikipedia describing chess rules etc...
But it´s a little bit strange in that context, isn´t it?
Than you very much for your help!

The context actually helps quite a bit. It just means that the queen captures a pawn early in the game in the "poisoned pawn" variation of the Sicilian. I'm not sure which variation that is, because I don't know much about the Sicilian, but I think the "poisoned pawn" variation is a sub-variation in one of the big main variations (possibly the Najdorf?).

--Fromper

Bobby Fischer played the Poisoned Pawn Najdorf, thus he must be referring to this variation of it (as opposed to the French Poisoned Pawn, or Latvian Gambit Poisoned Pawn). Black grabs white's b-pawn on the 9th move (I believe) with his/her queen. Risky but leads to a draw with best play.

The najdorf poisoned pawn - which I think has been almost analysed out at this point, though I could be wrong, is 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d3 cd 4.Nd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 (najdorf variation) 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6.

The pawn is considered "poisoned" because black is wasting a lot of time with his queen if he grabs it, particularly in an opening where he's already spent a lot of time on moves which don't further his development (c5 and a6). That being said, this opening was very popular for a long time, as black had found a way to survive the attack and emerge a pawn up ... but as new resources were found for white, it became less popular.

This sort of position was arguably Fischer's greatest strength. Can black survive the attack if he grabs the pawn? Fischer repeatedly accepted pawns in positions like there, and then held on to grind out an endgame win.

I think up to this moment, there are still many unexplored possibility in poison pawn variaton