[syoc]

Yes. You do not need to choose a queen when the pawn reaches the opposite side.

[retrac]

There are even times when this is the right move. Sometimes you can put them in check by promoting to a knight, for example, where a queen would not. Common in beginner puzzles.

[not1ofU]

Your comment reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wCJalNkTEI

Text: https://en.chessbase.com/post/solution-to-a-truly-remarkable...

[Andrew_nenakhov]

This is a very nice illustration of this, where a player had to turn off autoconversion to queen on the last seconds to win the game: https://youtu.be/HFG8pCInJKw

[yoru-sulfur]

Another situation where you would want to convert to something other than a queen is when doing so would result in a stalemate.

[ctdonath]

Were redundant choices culled? No point in tracking all variations of pawn > queen/rook/bishop when one includes the moves of the others.

[tromp]

There is sometimes a point when you need to avoid giving stalement, like in the famous Savedraa study [1] or the vastly more intricate Babson task [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saavedra_position

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babson_task

[CrazyStat]

Sometimes the queen having both rook and bishop moves is a liability. There are positions (real positions from real games, not merely hypothetical ones) where promoting to a queen results in immediate stalemate, while promoting to a rook wins the game.

So those choices are not redundant.