Can you wait and then perform an en passant capture? I am new to chess, so sorry for this obvious question. I was surfing through the web and learned the en passant rule. In this question they say "You cannot wait a few moves and then use the en passant capture." So I went searching through websites to find out if I can wait, then play the en passant capture and found nothing. So what I want to know is, if for example there are 2 pawns by each other, can I wait and play a few moves and then perform the move. Example: (I know the image below can't happen, but just saying.)



And then play a few moves like shown below.



And finally capture the white piece using en passant.
En-passant can only occur immediately after a pawn moves two squares from its starting square, where it could have been captured had it only moved one square.

You cannot wait a move: if you choose not to immediately capture en-passant, you lose the ability to do so next move.