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Chess From Position

Chess960/Freestyle Positions in Chess From Position!

ChessAnalysisChess variantSoftware Development
https://chessfromposition.com now supports Chess960 positions!

What is Chess From Position?

In my previous blog post I introduced my website 'Chess From Position'. It is a free website that generates positions from real games in the Lichess Open Database. The idea? Give you a chess position that you can immediately explore, analyze, or play from.

If you are new to Chess From Position, I encourage you to read all the details about it in the previous blog post

Chess960 Positions are Now Available!

I am delighted to announce that I have updated the website to support positions from Chess960 (aka Fisher Random Chess aka Freestyle Chess). As with Standard Chess, these positions are picked from games from the Lichess Open Database - specifically, from games which have Stockfish evaluations in the db. I have several hundred thousand positions already parsed and available, and more are being added.

Search Features for Chess960 Positions

To access Chess960 positions, click on the down arrow next to the 'New Position' button, and select the 'Chess960' tab. Once that is selected, you can just hit 'New Position' to get one completely at random.

You can also be more specific about what kind of position you want.

Start Position Identifier

In Chess960, each game can start in one of 960 positions for the back rank pieces. These positions are numbered from 0 to 959. Each number (Start Position Identifier or SPID) uniquely identifies a position. If you already know the SPID you are interested in, you can enter it, hit 'New Position'. This will give you a random position from a game which had that starting position.

Patterns in the Start Position

You can search for the patterns you are interested in. For example if you want to look at starting positions where the bishops and knights are clumped together, you can search for 'bbnn' and the dropdown will narrow down the starting positions accordingly. You can then select one of them.

Number of Moves

You can choose how deep into the game you want to start. This remains the same as for Standard Chess.

Stockfish Evaluation

You can search for positions based on their Stockfish evaluation. This remains the same as for Standard Chess.

Getting a Chess960 position

Other Features

Other features that you can use with Standard Chess remain useable with Chess950 positions as well.

Explore the Position on the board

Loaded a position? Go ahead - make some moves! Test ideas, explore plans, and dive into the position. You can flip the board and play as either Black or White.

Integrate Seamlessly with Lichess

Lichess integration works fine with Chess960 positions as well. Once you load a position, you can:

  • Open the Analysis Board to review the position with tools you know and love.
  • Practice vs. Computer to bring up the Lichess practice board with hints
  • Play Against AI with customizable engine strength and color choice.
  • Create an Open Challenge and share the link to invite anyone to play the position.

Any changes you make to the position will get automatically carried over into Lichess with any of the options above.

FEN and PGN Support

Want to save or share the position? Copy the FEN to use anywhere, or grab the PGN of your moves to analyze later.

Why Chess960?

I added support for Chess960 positions based on user requests and my own interest in Chess960. And just, "because they're there!".

In my opinion, Chess960 is going to get more and more popular. It has been in the spotlight over the past year due to Magnus throwing his weight behind the Freestyle Chess Tour.

While studying opening theory for 960 opening positions is going to be a daunting task, there will be (are already?) systematic efforts by players to study patterns that might be helpful. For example, you could say that Chess960 opening positions where the Knights start together in the corner, or positions where the bishops are in two opposite corners could be studied together to come up with some general ideas. Chess From Position aims to aid this by allowing users to quickly bring up positions from such opening configurations.

I hope you enjoy this latest addition to Chess From Position. Try it out right away! Works on desktop and mobile https://chessfromposition.com