Generating a board from a list of moves

I'm playing chess with my uncle over email. We have a list of about 20 moves thus far, but each time I get a new email I have to go to a site and move the pieces digitally, all 20 moves, to get the board up to date. I know, I know I can do it physically with a real board, but is there any site / program where I can copy and paste the list of moves, and a board of that status is generated automatically?

Probably makes me lazy.

?

My uncle is not going to sign up for that. We're doing an old-school play by listing the moves, but I'm more of a visual person so wanted to see if something online existed to type in the moves.

If you learn FEN you can write down the board position within about one minute, then paste that into chess.com's Analysis board to get the corresponding board displayed.

Or use a Chess DB program to keep track of your games.

Or if your computer has Windows it should have Chess Titans, where you can play the moves on that board (in Human vs Human mode), and save the game as you exit the program.

Or you can keep track of the game in pgn format and paste that into an analysis board.

1: e4 e5 2: Nf3 Nc6 3: Bb5 a6 *

is valid pgn format as long as the asterisk is at the end.

Sorry. Tried and failed to post pgn 😕

I have created a tool which do exactly that from a FEN notation. It's free and fun :

http://chesscards.bitballoon.com/#/

 Is there a software/website that provides printable (black ink only) boards readily?

Where can I learn FEN?

Start at the same place you would for anything else: Wikipedia. That's what I did.

You don't really need to. If you have a chess program save the starting position as a PGN then copy your moves to the end (replacing anything after the stuff in square brackets) with a text editor,. It should reload into your chess program with the game so far. Click on the right hand barred arrow or the last move or whatever to get the final position. 

You don't need move numbers or anything else just so long as the moves are in the right order. Make sure if you have pawn promotions to write e.g. c8=Q rather than c8Q.

If you don't have a chess program download Tarrasch from here https://www.triplehappy.com/

[Event "Vs. Computer"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2023-10-21"]
[White "Francis
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 d6 5. Bxc6+ bxc6 6. d4 Bg4 7. dxe5 Bxf3 8.
Qxf3 dxe5 9. O-O f6 10. Rd1 Bd6 11. Nc3 Ne7 12. a4 O-O 13. Be3 Rb8 14. b3 Ng6
15. Qe2 Nf4 16. Qxa6 Qd7 17. Bxf4 exf4 18. Qc4+ Kh8 19. Qe2 Rfe8 20. Rd3 f5 21.
Qf3 fxe4 22. Nxe4 Qe7 23. a5 Qxe4 24. Qxe4 Rxe4 25. a6 Ra8 26. Kf1 Be5 27. c3
Kg8 28. Ra5 Kf7 29. f3 Re3 30. Rxe3 fxe3 31. Rxe5 Rxa6 32. Rxe3 Ra3 33. b4 Ra1+
34. Kf2 Ra2+ 35. Re2 Rxe2+ 36. Kxe2 Ke6 37. c4 Kd6 38. Ke3 Ke5 39. h4 Kd6 40.
Kd4 Ke6 41. Kc5 Kd7 42. g4 Kc8 43. Kxc6 Kd8 44. f4 1-0

That one won't do much good - it's got 4 "["s and only 3 "]"s and an odd number of unescaped double quotes.

Just copy your moves into a text file on as many lines as required using not more than 254 characters per line and not splitting any individual moves across lines. E.g.:

e4 e5 Nf3 

Nc6 Bb5

Then select "Learn"->"Analysis" from the menu on this site and drag the file into the area that says, "Paste one or more PGNs, or drag and drop your PGN file here" and click "Add Game(s)".

Your moves are then listed.

Click on the last move and your position is displayed. E.g. with the moves shown:

then add your chosen move and your opponent's response to your text file.

Bit inconvenient that it gives you an analysis, but just don't look.

To be valid, the asterisk at the end of an incomplete game is required for both import and export pgns as you say, but most programs, including chess.com, don't require it in an import pgn.

I think the relevant specs are 1994 version and 2010 version.

In both versions the colons following the move numbers are invalid, but are accepted in import format by some programs (e.g. Arena) - unfortunately not chess.com. For an import pgn, the specifications require an arbitrary sequence of white space characters followed by an arbitrary number of periods (which I believe is American for full stops). So valid (and accepted by chess.com Analyse) would be e.g.

1..e4 1 .........e5 Nf3 2Nc6 Bb5 3

 a6 *

But the move numbers are not required for an import pgn by either the specs or chess.com, so

e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6 Bb5 a6

is simplest (and also accepted by chess.com Analyse, though strictly invalid without the final asterisk).

1. d4 e5 2. Nf3 Bb4+ 3. Nc3 exd4 4. Nxd4 d5 5. a3 Bc5 6. b4 Bxd4 7. Qxd4 Bf5 8.
Qxd5 Bd7 9. Qxb7 Nc6 10. b5 Na5 11. Qa6 Nc6 12. bxc6 Qc8 13. Qb7 Qb8 14. Qxb8+
Rxb8 15. cxd7+ Kxd7 16. Nd5 Kc8 17. Bf4 Nf6 18. Nxc7 Ne8 19. Na6 Rb7 20. e4 Rb6
21. Be3 Rb2 22. Rc1 Ra2 23. Bc5 Nc7 24. Bc4 Rb2 25. O-O Re8 26. Bxa7 Rb7 27.
Bxf7 Rxe4 28. Nc5 Rxa7 29. Nxe4 Rxa3 30. Ra1 Ra8 31. Nd6+ Kd7 32. Rfd1 Kd8 33.
Bh5 g6 34. Bf3 Rb8 35. h4 Rb6 36. Nf7+ Kc8 37. Rd8# 1-0*