In chess, "promotion" refers to a rule that states that pawns that reach the eighth rank are replaced by ("promoted to") the controlling player's choice of a queen, rook, bishop, or knight. Promoted pawns almost always promote to a queen, since that is the strongest piece. However in certain very specific situations it may be better to promote to one of the other pieces. The second most common piece that pawns promote to after a queen is a knight, typically in order to place the enemy's king in check, whereas pawns promote to rooks or bishops extremely rarely, generally only for the purposes of lulz and mockery, but sometimes to avoid a stalemate. Promoting a pawn to a piece other than a queen is known as "underpromotion."