FEN (Forsyth-Edwards Notation)
"A standard notation for describing a particular board position of a chess game."
Interactive Demonstration
Visualizing the Concept
Use the interactive board to explore this position. Understanding FEN (Forsyth-Edwards Notation) is much easier when you can visualize the pieces in action.
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Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN) is a standard system for describing a specific board position using a single line of text. It provides all the necessary information to restart a game from that exact moment, including piece placement, active color, castling rights, en passant targets, and move clocks.
Recommended Tools
Frequently Asked Questions
A FEN string has six space-separated fields: piece placement, side to move, castling rights, en passant target square, halfmove clock, and fullmove number.
FEN describes a single position; PGN records an entire game move by move. FEN can be embedded inside PGN via the [FEN] header when a game starts from a non-standard position.
Use the Plychess FEN Validator to check syntax, piece counts and rule consistency, then load the position into the interactive board or Stockfish analysis.
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