Chess FEN codes for handicapped games

Some online Chess servers allow handicapped “odds” games (so you can say to a beginner “I’ll give you my queen to make it easier”), but they require the alternate starting position to be supplied in FEN code.

For example in the Lichess app, under either “Play with a friend” or “User menu” / “Following” / “Challenge to a game”, you can set “Variant” to “From position” and paste in a FEN if you want to give “odds” to your friend.

For convenience, here are some FEN positions for various handicaps you can copy and paste.

• FEN for queen-and-move odds (stronger player plays Black) rnb1kbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for queen odds (stronger player plays White) rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNB1KBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for two-rook odds (Black) 1nbqkbn1/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for queen and rook odds (Black) 1nb1kbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for queenside odds (Black) 4kbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for rook and knight odds (Black) 2bqkbnr/1ppppppp/p7/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for rook and pawn odds (Black) 1nbqkbnr/1pppp1pp/p7/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for rook odds (Black) 1nbqkbnr/1ppppppp/p7/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for knight odds (Black) r1bqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for pawn-and-move odds rnbqkbnr/ppppp1pp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for pawn-and-two-move odds (assuming King’s Pawn opening) rnbqkbnr/ppppp1pp/8/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
• FEN for two-move odds (assuming King’s Pawn opening) rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1

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