custom starting positions

I don't know if this is possible or not but I was thinking about how cool it would be to have the ability to make any starting position to start individual games or a tournament.

For example, consider a chess game where everything is the same except that one side has all pawns turned to knights while the other has all pawns turned to bishops.

Such games could be either unrated or have a separate rating kind of like chess960 has a different rating.

So like an 'anything goes' variant?  That's not chess!  Hmm seriously though, I'm not sure how popular it would be.  I guess we'll know based on the feedback the thread gets.

What it does make me think of though, as a random throwaway idea, is if there was an option to input a PGN into an unrated game and choose a starting point.  So, for instance, if you wanted to play out the endgame your own way of one of the games of your favorite world championship match, unrated, for instructional/learning purposes or for fun.  Or start from one of the middlegames of Alekhine's games and see what tactics you end up finding, then later comparing it to the book game.

This would then allow you to create PGNs with really crazy positions if you wanted to go through the trouble.

Yes, I know it's not chess, that's why I thought it shouldn't share the same rating system as standard chess. chess960 isn't even close to standard chess yet it's on this site, so perhaps an anything goes variant would add some unusual fun.

I also like your PGN idea.

You can already get PGN from the Analysis Board for any arbitrary position.

That would be a handy way to create such PGNs.  The idea above was about using those to play a game out vs. another human opponent in case it's unclear.

1. can-i-start-a-game-with-the-pieces-in-specific-position
2. does-anybody-think-this-would-be-fun
3. new-games-with-predetermined-set-up

Cool.  The 2nd thread was a good one.

Thanks for the links artfizz. I figured somebody had brought it up before but there is a lot to look through on these forums. I think this feature should be on  chess.com because the same thing could be done on a real chessboard if only there were someone to play me.

Being able to start a game based on PGN would be great. My friend and I frequently wonder how a game would have progressed if one of us had "done this instead" and we'd love to be able to export a particular position as a PGN and play some forked games.

I know we can just agree to follow the line of the previous game to a certain point but that's tedious and prone to mistakes.

Thanks,

Brent

I too wanted to start a tournament in a specific position to learn openings. I am not really fan of starting game with some imaginary positions. But I want to take fun of specific positions that arise during a game.

e.g Sicilian Defense: Paulsen Variation, Bastrikov Variation English Attack (B48). fried liver attack.

It would be too much of a fun as well as a good way to learn those openings one by one. It would also help to analyse the soundness of those openings.

You might say the starting position is not equal for both sides, some of them, but nothing is there to lose. Also that inequality might not make sense to more than 95% players. 

Plz sbd reply erik, FM MikeKlein,  PeterDoggers, (just tagging staffs).

I recently missed a notification to make my chess move in a game against my Uncle. I timed out and the game ended prematurely. 

In this situation it would be good to start a new game using the FEN from the previous game

This is a great idea and I would love to have this feature. Too many times I've played games with friends that lasted months only to eventually end because someone accidentally let it expire. Would be really nice to be able to pick the game right back up where you left off. Any progress on this in the last 6 years? ;)

I agree. Come on Chess.com it can't be that hard to add this feature

That's already possible for Daily games in v3. Just change the game type to FEN and insert a FEN string/position. 

Martin, is there any hope or plan to add this feature to live chess? Of course, for live it would have to be limited to standard openings in order for matching up thematic players to work. 

Not sure if it is a practical feature though... but for us beginners who are trying to develop and learn opening repertoires it would help make more effective use of scarce chess time.

I'll probably post this request in the support forum but maybe you heard of this kind of request before?

I have no idea if it might be likely. Though, thinking about it, I would guess no. You don't have a lot of time to look at a challenge in Live to see that it isn't a standard position and I think it would get limited use. I could potentially see it being a feature for Live tourneys, where there would be time for people to realize what they are getting into.

You could always create a suggestion ticket and see what staff thinks.

Yes you'd have to explicitly look for a game with a specific start position... and you might be waiting for quite some time. Maybe this feature in combination with the clubs might work...

Where is the link????????

What do you mean? You create a Custom Challenge on Daily and change the Type to Custom FEN. The paste in a valid FEN string with whatever position you want. It's only available on the website.

I've used in the past to finish an interesting OTB position, though it took me a few tries to get it just right

I want to do this so I can use chess.com to teach someone to play by setting up specific challenges, and playing those out.

This is an essential feature. Why is it missing?