Online FEN Display Tool Home


Black to move


Enter a chess position in standard FEN format:

What is FEN?

Forsythe-Edwards Notation (FEN) is a compact way of specifying the position of chess pieces on a board. Chess players may record a game position or ask fellow players about specific positions by using the FEN standard. FEN may be easily written by hand or typed in an e-mail message, and tools such as this web page may then display the game. Computer databases may use FEN to store board positions for chess puzzles.

Briefly, FEN describes chess pieces by single letters [PNBRKQ] for white and [pnbrkq] for black. The pieces found in each rank are specified, starting at the top of the board (a8..h8) and describing all eight ranks. Within each rank, all 8 positions must be specified, with one or more empty squares noted with a digit [1..8]. For example, /8/ is an empty rank (no pieces), while /4P3/ specifies four empty squares, a white pawn, and three more empty squares. The example below shows the beginnings of the Sicilian defense in FEN form.

Example: "rnbqkbnr/pp1ppppp/8/2p5/4P3/5N2/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKB1R b KQkq - 1 2"

The first letter ('w' or 'b') following the last position field indicates who is to move (white or black).

Full details may be found in Section 16.1 of the Portable Game Notation (PGN) document ftp://ics.onenet.net/pub/chess/PGN/Standard


Richard Tervo, 1999 < tervo@unb.ca >