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Initial Position, (Initial Setup, Array) the position where the game of chess starts. Pieces and king occupy their first rank, the pawns their second. White and black men are mirrored vertically. In orthodox classical chess, the kings occupy the e-file, the queen the d-file. bishop files are c and f, knight has b and g, and rooks a and h files respectively. In Fischer Random Chess or Chess960, there are 960 starting positions randomly determined and set up.

FEN

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Diagram

Ambiguity

In the context of search, the initial position might also refer the root of the search tree, which is not necessarily the initial position of the game of chess.

Perft

Movepath enumerations (perft) generated by Symbolic for the Initial Position ¹.

• Perft(10) 20 draft 9 Positions
• Perft(10) 400 draft 8 Positions
• Perft(11) 20 draft 10 Positions
• Perft(11) 400 draft 9 Positions
• Perft(12) 20 draft 11 Positions
• Perft(12) 400 draft 10 Positions
• Perft(13) 20 draft 12 Positions
• Perft(13) 400 draft 11 Positions
• Initial Position Summary

See also

• Bitboard Board-Definition
• Move List
• Opening
• Opening Book
• Perft Results
• Root
• Test-Positions

Forum Posts

• Komodo 11.2.2 - Initial position until depth 54 by Andreas Strangmüller, CCC, January 15, 2018 » Komodo
• Stockfish 8 - Initial position until depth 59 by Andreas Strangmüller, CCC, January 16, 2018 » Stockfish
• Cfish-54302a... Search of startpos to depth 50 by Louis Zulli, CCC, January 17, 2018 » CFish
• Stockfish 180113 - Initial position until depth 65 by Andreas Strangmüller, CCC, March 27, 2018 » Stockfish
• Houdini 6 - Initial position until depth 50 by Andreas Strangmüller, CCC, April 13, 2018 » Houdini

External Links

• Rules of chess - Initial setup | Wikipedia

References