FEN always gives the end position?

Interestingly, as I'm glad that you asked this question, KattenJansson, as I am a big fan of the fen.  You actually can get it at the beginning, as opposed to, endgame.  What I do is hit it, and where you have the options of the fen, I just click on the blank diagram.  I will show you an example when I annotate another game.  But, I think it's blank, and then you just keep clicking ok.  Doing that should allow you to get the position, as though, the pieces haven't moved yet.  I hope this helps.

@20. No the refuge of someone who has lost patience with someone who thinks that something isn't a problem because it isn't a problem for him.

Scott partially seconded.

FEN is useless for the players as they actually don't need it. It's ok for viewers.

FEN is also already implemented. If only it was for every move.

Here is the point: You just finished a game. You scroll back to an interesting position. You copy the FEN string. You paste it into Houdini/Chessbase's Position setup window. Voila, or so you think, only to realize that chess.com does not care for this use case.

Agreed on the effort part. The only extra effort would be to make sure that it is not available while a game is in progress. It would be too tempting for would be cheaters as it would be extremely easy to use. But when the game is over or you're browsing an archive this would be a really nice feature to have.

This should be fixed!

How is the fix more simple if I have to keep on saving the png,  load it in a PNG reader, scroll to the position and paste the FEN into Fritz? I was already at the correct position in the chess.com archived game. This procedure definately is not easier than just copying the FEN and pasting it in Fritz's Position Setup. I'm sure it is easier for chess.com though.

It may very well be chess.com's problem if they want me to subcribe for a diamond membership again. Does anyone on the chess.com staff care to comment on this?

I found this utility:

http://www.lutanho.net/pgn/pgn2fen.html

You plug in the PGN and it outputs the FEN for each position, pretty easy to use.

You can also use a live chess analysis board to get the FEN for any position.

For me it only shows the FEN of the current/final position, even if you go to an earlier move.  This is also a shortcomming chess.com's Game Editor -- it will only give the FEN of the start position.  I wonder if this was a mistake, or if they intentionally want to make it more difficult for us to get the FEN for any move in general (by forcing us to use off-site apps).

I just noticed that there is a way, using only chess.com resources, to get the FEN code for any position in any game played on this site: the Game Explorer. Just click on the desired move in the move list, and the matching FEN code for the resulting position is displayed at right.  Note that this doesn't work if you instead use the arrows to get to the desired move.  Strange.

FEN is nothing more than a "snapshot" of a position on the chess board.  WHEN that snapshot is taken is up to the creator of the FEN.  PGN is a record of MANY moves made, typically for an entire game.  The PGN record is typically used by a software PGN viewer/player, which allows the moves recorded in the PGN file to be displayed and played out over a virtual chess board.

Give RussBell a cigar!

I use FEN with DiagTransfer to create homebrew flash cards for chess positions I want to study.

DiagTransfer creates professional looking chess diagrams. Recommended.

http://alain.blaisot.free.fr/DiagTransfer/English/home.htm

It works for me.

But can you get the FEN for positions earlier in that game?

Any position in the game. Just go to the position you want, click FEN and then the Current button, and it'll generate the FEN for that position.

ChessPad2 is also an awesome program.