uuhh....

Ha!

That's SP647: RNBKRQNB. Wouldn't 'The Position of the Beast' be SP666: RNKRBBNQ? As for 'White to move' in SP647, how about 1.e4?- Mark (SP = Start Position)

Ok.  I thought this was gonna be one of Beast's funny threads.

 Huh. I calculated that based on tables in a book I have, but a list on the web agrees with you. I'll have to wait til I get home from work to see if I calculated wrong or the table I had was wrong.

Ah, it was my miscalculation. I was using Milener's book, which gives his numbering system as well as Schnaragl's and Fritz's. I mixed up the non-bishop positions from Schnaragl's system with the bishop positions for Milener's position, and then got the queen and the knight mixed up.

Obviously, the beast doesn't want me making jokes about it, and clouded my mind.

http://www.CastleLong.com/download/ClpCovId960.ZIP

The above link to CastleLong.com downloads a simple and *entirely safe* command line (Start > Run > cmd.exe) program that translates, in either direction, between setup numeric IDs -and- the eight letter piece strings like 'rnbkrqnb'. Below is a paste in from a cmd.exe window wherein I just ran ClpCovId960.exe, which shows the input and output:

[C:\PathLast\]
>> ClpCovId960.exe /ps rnbkrqnb

RNBK-RQNB , R#720 , S#647 , F9#856

[C:\PathLast\]
>>

[C:\PathLast\]
>> ClpCovId960.exe /s# 647

RNBK-RQNB , R#720 , S#647 , F9#856

[C:\PathLast\]
>>

Thank you, Gene Milener.