Nov 13, 2020 'Pigeon chess' or 'like playing chess with a pigeon' is a figure of speech originating from a comment made in March 2005 on Amazon by Scott D. Weitzenhoffer regarding Eugenie Scott's book Evolution vs. Creationism: An introduction.

If you need to describe a position reached during a game of chess, how would you do it? The Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN for short) is one of the easiest ways.

Here is what you need to know about FEN:

• How Does FEN Work?

What Is FEN?

FEN is the abbreviation of Forsyth-Edwards Notation, and it is the standard notation to describe positions of a chess game. Steven J. Edwards, a computer programmer, created this notation system based on another system designed by the journalist David Forsyth. Edwards modified the older notation system so that chess software could use it.

FEN differs from the Portable Game Notation (PGN) because it denotes only a single position instead of the moves that lead to it.

Why Is FEN Important?

FEN is important because it makes it easy to translate any chess position into a single line of text. It facilitates the process of recreating positions using computers and allows players to share them and restart games from any point they desire.

For this reason, FEN is especially helpful to chess teachers, coaches, trainers, and students. It replaces the need for chess mentors to send large PGN files to their students and speeds up the process of sharing positions, even when people are far apart.

How Does FEN Work?

FEN sequences are composed exclusively of ASCII characters so computers can recognize them. These strings have six different fields, each describing one aspect of a position and separated by a space character.

Piece Placement

The first field represents the placement of pieces. It starts describing the content of each square, beginning from the eighth rank and ending with the first. For each rank, squares begin from the first file and go to the eighth.

Lowercase letters describe the black pieces. Just like in PGN, 'p' stands for pawn, 'r' for rook, 'n' for knight, 'b' for bishop, 'q' for queen, and 'k' for king. The same letters are used for the white pieces, but they appear in uppercase. Empty squares are denoted by numbers from one to eight, depending on how many empty squares are between two pieces.

The image below illustrates the way FEN records represent the position of the pieces.

Active Color

The second field indicates who moves next. This field always appears in lowercase, and 'w' specifies that it is White's turn to move, while 'b' indicates that Black plays next.

Castling Rights

The next field tells if the players can castle and to what side. Uppercase letters come first to indicate White's castling availability, followed by lowercase letters for Black's.

The letter 'k' indicates that kingside castling is available, while 'q' means that a player may castle queenside. The symbol '-' designates that neither side may castle.

Possible En Passant Targets

If a pawn has moved two squares immediately before a position is reached and is thus a possible target for an en passant capture, the FEN string adds the square behind the pawn in algebraic notation in its fourth field. If no en passant targets are available, the '-' symbol is used.

Notice that the mere fact that a pawn has moved two squares implies that this indicator of a possible en passant capture would be present. The absence of enemy pawns threatening that capture does not influence this notation.

Halfmove Clock

The next field of the FEN code informs how many moves both players have made since the last pawn advance or piece capture—known by chess programmers as the number of halfmoves. This field is useful to enforce the 50-move draw rule. When this counter reaches 100 (allowing each player to make 50 moves), the game ends in a draw.

Fullmove Number

The sixth and last field of the FEN code shows the number of completed turns in the game. This number is incremented by one every time Black moves. Chess programmers call this a fullmove.

How To Use FEN In Chess.com

You just learned how the FEN system works and how to create one yourself, but that does not mean that you need to do it by hand. Chess.com can do all the hard work for you and provide you with the FEN code for any position automatically.

If you want to share a specific position with others, all you have to do is click the share button that you can find in any of your games or in the Analysis Board. Next, when you select the PGN option, the FEN string appears at the top of the window.

If you already have a FEN code and you want to translate it to a position, you can also do that very quickly on Chess.com. Go to the Analysis Board and select the Load FEN option. Next, you should paste the FEN code in the field that pops up and click Load.

Conclusion

Chess How To Castle

You now know what FEN is and its importance. You can also use it to share and check any position you would like. Now head over to our the Analysis Board to test out the FEN feature!

In this article we continue our series of attacking patterns by having a look at the most common ways of attacking our opponent’s castle when he has a played a fianchetto. The idea is to learn the standard means of launching your attack.

Not only the pawn advanced to g3 (g6 if black) controls two key squares like f4 and h4, but also the bishop on g2 is usually a very strong piece. However, there are some common patterns of attack a player can follow in order to damage this castle formation:

• The advance of the H pawn with two main goals: one is to open the H file, and the other is to “soften” the g3 spot after the capture. This way there could be ideas of sacrifices in order to destroy the king’s shelter;

• Trading the fianchetto’s bishop. This is a highly common idea. Once this bishop is off the board, the king is immediately weakened and the squares f3 and h3 become targets of invasion;

• A third idea could be to bury the fianchetto bishop by placing a pawn on e4, which controls the f3 square and makes the bishop very passive. Later on the attacking side could try to invade on f3;

• Finally, we must also consider the pawn advance to f4 (f5) in order to weaken the kingside structure, similar to the goal behind the advance of the h pawn.

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Let’s move on now to some examples. We recommend our readers to study them closely and grasp the repeating patterns despite being different positions:

How To Castle In Chess Game Pigeon Free

Kasparov,G – Bareev,E 2001

The diagram above has many elements that tell us that black’s king is quite unsafe. A fianchetto in which black has played e6 is rather weak. Pay attention to how Kasparov conducts the attack and employs with the methods listed above.

Timman,J – Kasparov,G 1991

The diagram shows a dynamic position in which both sides are following different strategies.

White is trying to apply pressure on black’s queenside, while black is responding by active play in the center and on the kingside. Note how Kasparov has advanced his H pawn with the idea of softening up white’s kingside structure. Timman underestimated black’s potential attack and fell under strong tactical blows. See what happened in the game:

Psakhis,L-Kasparov,G 1990

Here we have a typical scenario of the English Opening with attacks on opposite wings. White hasn’t achieved much out of his attack on the kingside, yet and black is able to take over the initiative with his next move. See the details here:

Kasparov,G – Kamsky,G 1991

Gata Kamsky, playing with black in the diagram above, has been a bit careless in the opening, reaching this position after only 9 moves.

Black is hoping for some quick counterplay on the queenside or perhaps a timely f7-f6 in order to give some life to his poor bishop on g7. Kasparov is famous for his energetic playing style and here you have one great example. See the details and learn how black was crushed here:

Kasparov,G – Lutz,C 1986

The diagram shows a typical scenario of the Grunfeld defense in which white has total control of the center with his pawns and pieces, but black is comfortably exerting pressure from a far distance.

Black’s plan is to play Qd7 and bring his rooks to the D or C file in order to force the transition to the endgame. Kasparov thought white has to attack and exploit the position of the black king with the somewhat weakened f6/h6 squares. See the details here:

We hope you have enjoyed reading this article on Kasparov’s technique and learned the attacking patters that arise over and over again in this type of positions. Even if the positions are different, the ideas are basically the same and applying the basic knowledge with precision is one of the keys to improvement.

If you want to improve your chess level, you need to have a clear study plan. If you aim for a dramatic improvement at chess you need to work on all of the elements of the game in a systematic way:

• tactics
• positional play
• attacking skills
• endgame technique
• classical games analysis
• psychological preparation
• and much more

That seems to be like a lot of things, and that is. But no worries, we have made it easy for you. Our comprehensive training course covers it all and much more. Sign up for 21 Day Training right now!