En Passant rule

I apologise in advance that I cannot enter the correct PGN/FEN here.

This is the final board position from my most recently concluded game. I played as White. 

A short number of moves prior to my being able to mate my opponent I was considering playing my pawn to g4 bypassing the pawn on h3. Looking at the analysis tool in thinking of this I noticed that on blacks next turn he could not take the now, g4 pawn, ‘en passant’.  From my (obviously wrong) understanding of the rules I believed black could. Why couldn’t he? 

Thanks in advance  🙏 

Thank you Ava. I misunderstood that a pawn advanced further than in the example I gave would be subject to en passant. That is a useful nuance of that rule to know. 😊

Basically, to explain the rule, and how it applies here:

Your pawn on g2 was, sitting where it was, subject to capture from the Black pawn on h3.

If you had advanced it only one step, to g3, it would no longer be subject to capture.

The en passant rule is all about trying to sneak past an enemy pawn by taking advantage of the double space first move instead of moving one step normally.

So if the Black pawn were on h4, moving your pawn normally from g2 to g3 would make it subject to capture, and then the en passant rule would operate to make sure that by moving to g4 instead of g3, you wouldn't escape it being liable to capture.

Thank you John for your reply.

i would have felt that by moving to the pawn to g4 in the given position that I was doing just that-sneaking past the h3 pawn using the double move to avoid capture. So, I felt that he would have been able to take me for my sneakiness ☺️.  It would seem that indirect threat of capture rather than direct (if the black pawn in the example was on h4) is how en passant works. 

Thanks again

Jim 

Thanks 🙏 Mark