Mastering Chess.com: How to Create Your Own Custom Position
Are you looking to spice up your chess games on Chess.com? One way to do so is by creating custom positions to challenge yourself or your friends.
In this article, we will explore what Chess.com is, what a custom position entails, and how you can easily create, set up, save, and access custom positions on the platform.
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned player, custom positions can add a new level of excitement to your chess experience.
Contents
Key Takeaways:
What is Chess.com?
Chess.com is a website that lets you play, learn, and connect with others over the internet. Built as a community for chess players, it allows users to play real-time chess on a virtual board with opponents from around the world, regardless of the hour. Users can play regular and chess960 variants of the game with clock timing available. Chess.com provides tactics trainers that analyze user games and give feedback for improvement. The website has lessons and videos from grandmasters for players at every skill level and there are forums, tournaments, and clubs that users can join.
What is a Custom Position in Chess.com?
In Chess.com, a Custom Position refers to an any arrangement of chess pieces that you may place on the board to represent a very complex or hypothetically impossible position. Custom Positions are used for a few different purposes such as composing or solving studies, verifying chess puzzles, teaching or demonstrating strategies, planning moves during ongoing games, resetting the board to the starting position following a game, or taking a quick mental break from playing regularly against the computer or in multiplayer games.
Users may start up the Analysis mode and under the Game setup settings load a Custom Position FEN code to represent an arbitrarily difficult chess problem. However, there is no way to enforce setting up or generating your own custom position legitimately in actual games – this mode is intended to provide more intelligence on a particular position you are working on off of Chess.com’s site.
How to Create a Custom Position?
To create a custom position on Chess.com, click the Analysis Board in Play, adjust the settings if required, click the Start from Custom Position button, and then click any square on the board to customize the position.
Additional ways to create a custom position are to set custom positions within the Create a Game board or simply create a custom named position analysis board within the Analysis dropdown within the “Play” section.
If you save a custom position in an analysis board, make sure it remains analyzed (click the Evaluate button and choose Anything).
Custom chess positions on Chess.com are ideal for sharing ideas and strategic thoughts on a game, or demonstrating a certain chess problem discovered by a player. It can also be used to help speed up the learning process for newer players who are struggling with specific situations in a match.
Step 1: Log in to Chess.com
To create a custom position, first log in to your Chess.com account. Step one makes sure you’re signed in once you’ve moved from the already signed home page to the analysis board. On desktop, you will see your username appear in the top right corner of the screen if you’re signed in. On mobile, click the three horizontal lines in the upper left corner to reveal whether you’re signed in or not.
Step 2: Go to the ‘Play’ tab
Click on the three horizontal lines in the upper left corner of your screen to bring up a Chess.com navigation panel. This option will not be present in a full-screen view. Choosing the Play tab will take an individual to the section where custom chess positions can be inserted and the practice mode can be found. These features function in tandem and are accessed together.
Select ‘Custom’ from the drop-down menu for the position of the opponent. Finding position for the new position after selecting the piece you want to position, there is no option to insert an FEN or PGN. If you adjust the starting board until it represents the desired position, then if you create a new game against the computer using ‘Custom’, the two custom positions will feature your desired custom position in the middle of the board.
Step 4: Click on ‘Create Custom Position’
After inputting the name and the position of the two kings, click the Save button to continue. Do not worry about setting the material balance. Chess.com will calculate whether the position is possible based on the coding of legal starting positions allowed by standard chess rules.
A Finder Window with your computer files will appear. After deciding where you would like to save the new custom position file, pick the location, and click on Create Custom Position at the bottom.
How to Set Up the Custom Position?
The custom position is actually an unfinished or altered game already in progress, so it is NOT set up. You have to modify a game in progress, save it as a PNG file, and upload the PNG as a Set up Position. You then adjust the board to get the desired position by moving pieces to and capturing those from areas outside the main board. Then the position is set up, and may be played against by selected invitees or the custom opponent engine. Set up the position by moving figures to capture outside the frame, as shown below to achieve no knights and one queen per side.
Step 1: Choose the pieces you want to include
To make a custom piece set on Chess.com, you will first need to choose the piece set for which you want to modify or add pieces. You can modify piece sets on Chess.com by going to your Settings > Game Settings page and then choosing Art Style to select the piece set you would like to modify. You can design your board and pieces using certain characters from the game or create your own SVG pieces externally and then drag images from Computer > TV output to load custom image pieces, such as plants, furniture, TV equipment, musical instruments, a PacMan maze set, and much more.
Unfortunately, basic Chess.com members do not have the feature to upload unique piece shapes or colors directly as custom pieces. Only Astronomy.com allows you to create custom shapes and access your favorite shapes of planets, asteroids, and comets. In ErgoCortex Puzzles, premium subscribers get access to custom piece sets of backsaws, star clusters, tennis balls, and quite a lot more. See the respective cherishedarte page and how to play ErgoCortex puzzles pages for guidance on how to access custom piece sets for each of the companies.
Step 2: Place the pieces on the board
To place the pieces on the board, click the FEN tab in Sidepane. A Click to toggle piece figures option permits you to easily place or remove pieces by clicking on them in the central 64 square board. Ensure initially there is an exact duplicate of your desired position as any time you click somewhere, another copy of the new position and an updated FEN code for that position is created. You can alternatively type FEN code yourself or copy and paste it.
Step 3: Choose the side to move first
You can choose whether the light (White) or dark (Black) side moves first. In international FIDE chess, the player with the lighter-colored pieces moves first.
On Chess.com you can select which piece you want to play as regardless of their side with the Side To Move First option. You can select it to be Both Sides, White Only, or Custom. If you choose Custom, you must choose which side is going to move first on your own.
Step 4: Select any special rules or conditions
Choose from a variety of Special Rules and Conditions that you can add/remove when creating a new custom position. These include Perpetual Check, Threefold Repetition, 50-Move Rule, Dead Position, Stalemate Chess Variants, and Pawn promotion side. You can even make your chess match hyper-custom by choosing the option of Platypus Chess which allows players to speak on the phone during the game, amend the board, and have exclusive custom rules that are not available in standard chess or other variants.
How to Save the Custom Position?
You cannot save a custom position in Chess.com’s Analysis Board. It automatically saves for you. When you make a change to the board (from color to the piece’s position), Chess.com automatically refreshes your past positions and includes the new move and its impact as per your instructions, assuming you did not proceed to a 3D board when you wish for two dimensions or did something else that changed from the original board you set up for your analysis guide.
This even applies if you close the Analysis Board and later return to the position. Chess.com will remember your analysis after you close it. This is useful for returning to positions for further analysis, referencing for opening/middle game strategies or reproducing a position for teaching purposes.
After you have edited every aspect of the custom position you are creating under the Details popup, you can click on the Save button. The system prompts you for the name of the custom position.
If you have not selected the basic rules or non-material moves, you will get an error message. Even if the basic rules or non-material moves options are changed, to ensure the game settings are valid, it is recommended to hit the ‘change settings’ button to check for errors. These are the new custom settings I have set for my newly designed chess position.
Artificial castling
My side: Disabled
Opponent side: Disabled
En passant
Home allowed squares: Enabled
Protective pawn only: Enabled
Protective pawn is pinned: Enabled
Threefold repetition
Can end automatically: Enabled
Fifty-move rule
Can end automatically: Enabled
Be sure to give your new chess position a name.
Step 2: Give your custom position a name
Describe your custom position with a name associated with the board position and intentions of your variant. This will make it memorable in case you want to share it with others. The name can be long and descriptive, or short and clever. In the case of the latter, the description box associated with the custom position is a great place to fully describe it. Internal Chess.com custom positions, those shared with people in a club or circle. are searchable in the position-sneak of the Chess.com play page. Making a custom position with a clear name helps ensure your position is easily searchable.
Step 3: Select the privacy settings
If you want to be the only player in this custom position, you can select Only Me. If you want others to be able to see the custom position on your account but not play it, then set it to only friends. If you want it to appear in the My Teams section and be shareable with those in your organization, set the visibility to those three!
Step 4: Click on ‘Save Position’
Click on the red ‘+ Add’ button in the ‘New Positions’ section to create a new ‘open new position’ form that automatically saves to the ‘Your Library’ section. Chess.com uploaded the new position for me when I created a new library folder, but I am now not able to use the tool, as it seems there is now not a way to edit or delete old positions and folders to create new ones that suit what I now need.
Giev is a good alternative tool to allow the user to play with the chessboard position and create their own custom pieces. Though Giev does keep everything in a library, users can clear what they no longer want without contacting customer support.
Giev is a free, open-source chess software project for education, research, and games. The GIEV project offers both the traditional game of chess and international chess, the Chinese game of chess, as well as special chess. As long as the Linux version only supports English software, the Windows version supports English, simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and other languages.
How to Access Saved Custom Positions?
You access saved custom positions in the following ways:
- Load the Select Position option when creating a game and choose the custom position from the saved games library.
- Visit the Custom Position Library to access all saved custom positions or positions created by other users where they have allowed them to be shared. There is no way to access your specific saved custom position library from this screen.
- Administrators can access tournament saved preliminary/tiebreak rounds positions from the Admin Panel on the Tournament form. You cannot load these directly to play them, but you can view them, review them, or end/claim a game that is still active from this point.
Step 1: Go to the ‘Play’ tab
After logging in to your Chess.com account, hover the mouse over your profile pic on the top-right of the screen. Select the ‘Play’ tab from the dropdown menu, or click on the ‘Play’ icon (a chessboard image) on the left sidebar.
Do you find edits to these videos? On the Youtube version of this podcast episode Wine for Normal People reviewed a Tavernello Rosso from Emilia-Romagna. Let me see the screen or text this reads.
ok. Yes. These are the types of changes the video maker can make.
How Does the youtube version compare to the Podcast Fox Harb’r Resort Escape?
- Good attention for heading and bulleted list from topic heading
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- No comparison charm
- Web search uses extra empty line for item heading. Video maker is more efficient
After setting up the initial position of a random or standard chess game, you can change it to a customized game. To continue after step one in setting up a Custom game in any game type on chess.com, select “Custom” from the future moves board. You’ll see the custom pieces in different locations on the game board according to the pieces that moved from f2 and d1 in the example below. This is the quickest way to set up and view, as the way the pieces are set up after those two pieces move are always the same, so one can adjust accordingly.
Here is the image illustrating exactly how the custom pieces should be set up after the initial moves selected for the custom game.
Step 3: Click on ‘My Saved Positions’
After you click Save in the position builder, to find your position, go back to the create a game against the computer view found in the Home Screen’s Play section, which is the fourth one in the top menu or accessible directly via www.chess.com/play/computer. From there you should see the ‘My Saved Positions’ link once you have saved your first position. Clicking this allows you to pick this position and play it against the computer.
Step 4: Choose the custom position you want to play
After you Save the changes to a custom position, these positions are used on the Find a Game page based on the Challenge Preferred Moves slider setting. Set the [](3) to as exclusively as possible to only be matched with others wanting your particular position to play. Use the Recommended setting to primarily be matched with a similar position to your own. Or slide it to the far left to be matched with anything.
These Challenges cover every game phase, from the starting position to common openings, common endgames, and other identified positions.
In the Search for Game section at the top right of the Chess.com homepage, you can enter the custom position FEN code in the Search box to be matched with those wanting to play that position. To find the FEN of a game, right-click on a position above the Notation list of a completed game and choose Copy FEN.
To learn what the FEN code of a specific position is before starting a game, play the position in the Live Chess Analysis board by dragging and dropping pieces and then click the gear in the Analysis board to copy the FEN of the current position after adjusting it to your satisfaction. Then simply paste that position as needed to challenge others or see what it would look like in different circumstances.
