Easy to use board diagram tool

If you need a quick way to make a board diagram from scratch, this is a very good site for that. 

http://toybox.a.la9.jp/chushogi/dhtmlchu/chush2.html

Only 5 buttons - nice and simple. The promoted sides are in semi-cursive and red.

• Upper left button: flip piece (promote, unpromote)
• Upper right button: reverse piece (change player)
• Lower left button: go to start position
• Lower middle button: erase entire board
• Lower right button: flip board

I also recommend the Joe Henbethydd's program ChuDo, which have a nice and customizable interface.

You can download it here http://sadbhava.ru/chudo/index_en.html

It contains move tips (useful for beginners), training mode to learn pieces and their moves and promotions.

For use playing correspondence games you can choose game mode "vs Human" and make moves for you and your opponent and then save the game and load it later. Very convenient.

@dax00 is it possible that you share here how you create your boards?

• Microsoft Excel
• Select 12 columns (13 if with coordinates). Format Cell Size > Column Width = 3.14
• Select 14 rows (15 if with coordinates). Format Cell Size > Row Height = 24.75. (For coordinate board, make second row height 10.5)
• Select entire area. "Center align", "middle align", and "wrap text".
• Fill in top and bottom rows of the region with black. Fill in the actual board area with a warm color, not too light.
• Within board area, "border all" with the default border color.
• I use KaiTi font for the pieces. Size 12 font for: P, GB. Size 14 font for: C, S, G, BT, FL, L, RC, SM, VM. Size 16 font for: W, WH, FS, DE, Ph, Kr, B, R, DH, DK. Size 18 font and for: FO, FB, HF, SE, Q, Ln. Size 20 font and bold for: CP, K.
• For coordinate numbers, I use Century Gothic size 9. For coordinate letters, I use Century Gothic size 11, and "Left Align" it.
• I use Japanese handwriting keyboard to initially get the pieces set up. Sente in black text, Gote in white text. Handwriting is faster than other modes of input for me. I can write most characters required in under a second. After they've been set up, I copy/paste the pieces to move them, then delete the extra.
• Merge left 3 cells in top/bottom rows for player name. Merge right 6 cells in top/bottom rows for writing their last move. Player name in Tw Cen MT Condensed size 16. Extension counter (green) and move counter (blue) in Agency FB size 16.
• I do everything on my phone. So my screenshots are saved in the "Screenshot touch" app, where I crop them for use.
• For multiple boards, I just copy/paste a default board with everything on it, to save time.

I have a few observations:

• Some portion of the posted boards will have board errors. (A mismatch between a move notation and a board.)
• Some portion of the board errors will be erroneously taken for the current up to date board.
• Unintended moves, illegal or not, will be posted based upon them.
• Previously mentioned unintended or illegal moves have nothing to do with playing strength, and it is not desirable that such moves impact the outcome of a game.
• Some portion of the board errors will never ever be noticed by anyone, and a game continues while having taken a path of illegal moves somewhere during the game.

I think that in any game, at most one person should post the boards. With more than one person posting boards, the chances become higher that

• one of the boards has an error but the other hasn't
• both boards have errors but not the same
• one person is impacted by a board error on one board while the other isn't

And one last observation: it may take too much of @dax00 's time if he ends up posting the boards in too many / all games in this club on chess.com

I carefully monitor all posted boards for rated club games. It's very unlikely that I miss an error. If there is an error, not long passes before I spot it. As long as players aren't making 20+ moves a day, this is an entirely reasonable task, not consuming more than half an hour of time per day.

I update boards for my own games about twice a day, which takes about 6 minutes. I also update my copy of the boards for other games about daily, which takes about 12 minutes.

If a legal written move is posted with an incorrect board, the written move is what counts. Players are responsible for checking boards for accuracy. I have suggested that boards be posted without written moves, so that they must be scrutinized to properly discern the played move, and for easier enforcement of the rules. One option is to mandate this: either write your move, or post a board with your move played on it, but not both.

I think it's fine if multiple people post boards. In theory, boards should more or less match, and all instances where players are not on the same page will be clearly evident.

OK when I try one character for each piece this becomes my board:

Promoted pieces:

I don't have Microsoft office on my private laptop so I've been doing this with OpenOffice. I obviously don't want to use my work laptop for Chu.

This program spontaneously gave me Gote and turned the board 180 degrees to Gote's perspective. I could not figure out how to switch this back. Because even when I'm Gote I want to post a board from Sente's perspective. That's why I've not yet used this.

This is adjustable. At the beginning of creating new game you choose the side you're playing. By default the side you're playing is made by furigoma (i.e. randomically), but you can set this in settings. Usually the opposite side (top side) is AI, but this may be human as well, in this case second player is an opposite player (and always on top side).
Note that if you're playing the 'player vs player' game (on one computer), then choosen side relates to the orientation, which will be displayed during the entire game. For example, if you have chosen "Top Side (Opposite) -> Human" and "First turn of Bottom Side -> Gote", then you begin game with Gote at bottom and Sente at top. If you have chosen "First turn of Bottom Side -> Furigoma", then whether bottom side is Sente or Gote - it is chosen randomly.

This may be not very convenient for you, but that is how the program implemented by Joe Henbethydd. If you would like to ask the developer to add an option to turn board during the game, I may ask him to do so.